Library of congress, 



n 



■"♦■' 






CXITED STATES OF AJIEKIOA. i 



J 



THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 




RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 



THE 



RIGHT HONORABLE 



W. E. GLADSTONE. 



a gituHg from Uft, 



:^i OF csiv*.^, 



' R|^.,. ' ■•!?r. 




BY 

HENRY W. LUCY, 

» « 

AUTHOR OF 

"^ DIARY OF TWO PARLIAMENTS." 



2^v*^V-(i^/c 



BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1895. 



Copyright, 1895, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



All rights reserved. 



Santbersitg Press: 

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



PREFACE. 



The obvious difficulty of writing within the limits 
of this volume a sketch of the career of Mr. Gladstone 
is the superabundance of material. The task is akin 
to that of a builder having had placed at his disposal 
materials for a palace, with instructions to erect a 
cottage residence, leaving out nothing essential to 
the larger plan. I have been content, keeping this 
condition in mind, rapidly to sketch, in chronological 
order, the main course of a phenomenally busy life, 
enriching the narrative wherever possible with auto- 
biographical scraps to be found in the library of Mr. 
Gladstone's public speeches, supplementing it by per- 
sonal notes made over a period of twenty years, 
during which I have had unusual opportunities of 
studying the subject. 

HENRY W. LUCY. 

Reform Club, 

February, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter ^^^^ 

I. Boyhood ^^ 

II. His Kinsfolk ' . . . 24! 

III. Member for Newark 37 

IV. Chancellor op the Exchequer 50 

V. "Unmuzzled" 61 

VI. Premier 68 

VII. Throwing up the Sponge 76 

VIII. Pamphleteer 85 

IX. The Piery Cross 89 

X. Premier Again 97 

XL The Bradlaugh Blight 100 

XII. The Pourth Party . . . » Ill 

XIII. Egypt 124 

XIV. The Penjdeh Incident . 133 

XV. The Irish Party 140 

XVI. Suspension of Thirty-seven Members . . . 146 

XVII. Resignation of Mr. Porster 154 

XVIII. The Kilmainham Treaty 163 

XIX. Gathering Clouds 168 



Viii CONTENTS, 

Chapter Paoe 

XX. The Storm Bursts 174 

XXI. The Stop-gap Government 181 

XXII. Home Rule 191 

XXIIL In Opposition 203 

XXIV. Fourth Time Premier 214 

XXV. The Bow Unbent ^ . 222 

XXVI. In the House and out 231 



MR. GLADSTONE. 

A STUDY FROM LIFE. 



CHAPTER I. 

BOYHOOD. 

Op Mr. Gladstone's manifold moods there was none 
more charming to the House of Commons than that 
in which he sometimes chatted with it on a Tuesday 
or a Friday night. This happened in days when 
such opportunities were still reserved for private 
members. Neither the Leader of the House nor the 
Leader of the Opposition had direct concern in what 
was going forward. Ordinary men in Mr. Glad- 
stone's position would have been glad to make the 
most of opportunity for comparative rest. For him, 
Parliamentary debate, of whatever character, was, 
up to the last, irresistible. Being present, he list- 
ened with flattering, even dangerous, interest to 
whosoever might be speaking, however personally 
unimportant. The hon. member, chilled by inat- 
tention in other parts of the House, might, in Mr. 
Gladstone's absence, have earlier concluded his 
remarks. Finding him an attentive, apparently an 
entranced, listener, he went on to the fullest limits, 
of his notes. 



14 MR. GLADSTONE. 

That was one consequence of conscientious habit 
on the part of the great Parliamentarian. Another, 
not infrequent, was that he himself was drawn into 
the debate, forthwith lifting it to the height of his 
own stature, luring into the fray other Parliamentary 
giants who had entered the House innocent of inten- 
tion to take part in the current proceedings. Com- 
plaint was made by stern, unbending business men 
that debate was thus unnecessarily prolonged. Com- 
pensation was forthcoming when, as sometimes hap- 
pened on these occasions, Mr. Gladstone indulged in 
a vein of reminiscence, chatting about old times and 
faded faces. With elbow leaning on the brass- 
bound box, he spoke, in low conversational tone, of 
Canning, O'Connell, Lord Aberdeen, Sir James 
Graham, Cobden, and others whom he had known 
and worked with in years long past. The scene 
ever recalled Priam sitting at the Scasan gate in 
company with the seniors of the Trojan race who — 

Leaned on the walls and basked before the sun, 
Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage, 
But wise throuofh time and narrative with age, 
In summer days like grasshoppers rejoice. 

This charming lapse into retrospect has sometimes 
occurred to Mr. Gladstone outside the House of 
Commons, supplying his future biographer with 
peeps into his past, of otherwise unattainable pre- 
cision and graphic force. Born in Liverpool on the 
29th of December, 1809, he revisited the city eighty- 
three years later to the very month. It was on the 
3rd of December, 1892, a memorable stage in a mar- 



BOYHOOD. 15 

vellous career. Once more, after being flung into 
an apparently bottomless pit, Mr. Gladstone, undis- 
mayed, lightly carrying the weight of fourscore 
years, had, practically single-handed, his worst ene- 
mies those of his own household, stubbornly fought 
his way back to power. Conservative Liverpool, 
having done its best to defeat the abhorred statesman 
at the polls, welcomed the honored son, affectionately 
endowing him with citizenship. 

It was the good fortune of the writer to be present 
on this occasion, as, indeed, he has, with very few 
exceptions, chanced to be within hearing of all the 
important speeches made by Mr. Gladstone in Par- 
liament and beyond its doors during the last twenty 
years. A man of singularly strong affection, Mr. 
Gladstone has through his long life clung to his 
native town. " I am hardly a Liverpool man, " he 
once said, "but I was a Liverpool boy." Standing 
on the platform in St. George's Hall, facing an 
enthusiastic crowd, memories of long ago teemed 
in the brain of the youngest citizen. "Many long 
years, " he said, in full, rich voice that made music 
in the furthest recesses of the many-pillared hall, 
"have separated me from familiarity with the com- 
munity of Liverpool, and Liverpool herself has, 
within these years, multiplied and transformed. 
When my recollections of her were most familiar, 
she was a town of one hundred thousand persons, 
and the silver cloud of smoke which floated above 
her resembled that which might appear over any 



16 MR. GLADSTONE. 

secondary borough or village of the country. I refer 
to the period between 1810 and 1820, and it is 
especially to the latter part of that period that my 
memory extends. I used as a small boy to look 
southward along shore from my father's windows 
at Seaforth to the town. In those days the space 
between Liverpool and Seaforth was very differently 
occupied. Four miles of the most beautiful sands 
that I ever knew offered to the aspirations of the 
youthful rider the most delightful method of finding 
access to Liverpool, and he had the other induce- 
ment to pursue that road, that there was no other 
decent avenue to the town. Bootle I remember a 
wilderness of Sandhills. I have seen wild roses 
growing upon the very ground which is now the 
centre of the borough. All that land is now partly 
covered with residences, and partly with places of 
business and industry. In my time but one single 
house stood upon the space between Rimrose brook 
and the town of Liverpool. I rather think it was 
associated with the name of Statham, if my memory 
serves me right, the name of the town clerk of 
Liverpool." 

Here is a marvellous memory. He sees again the 
solitary house standing between the now long-defiled 
Rimrose brook and the silver cloud of smoke which 
lay over the potentialities of Liverpool, and even 
remembers the name of the resident. 

Mr. Gladstone's earliest recorded recollection was 
of a visit paid in company with his mother to Mrs. 



BOYHOOD. 17 

Hannah More. "I believe," he says, "I was four 
years old at the time, and I remember that she pre- 
sented me with one of her little books — not unin- 
teresting for children — and that she told me she 
gave it me because I had just come into the world 
and she was just going out." Hannah More was 
born in 1745, the year when Prince Charlie won 
Edinburgh and triumphed at Prestonpans. Round 
her cradle there must have been whispered talk of 
Culloden, an epoch with which that hand-shake with 
Hannah More linked the greatest figure of the clos- 
ing years of the nineteenth century. 

Mr. Gladstone has personal recollections of a later 
war which had its Culloden for a far greater soldier 
than Charles Edward Stuart. He visited Edinburgh 
when he was five years old, and distinctly remembers 
hearing the glass in the windows of the Royal Hotel, 
at which his father stayed, rattle to the roar of the 
guns of the Castle as they announced one of the steps 
in the progress of Napoleon to Elba. He does not 
identify the particular occasion. It was in all prob- 
ability the surrender of Paris to the allies, which 
took place on the 31st of March, 1814. 

A still earlier reminiscence Mr. Gladstone once 
confided to me. He told me that, sprawling about 
on the nursery floor at an age that could not have 
exceeded eighteen months, he obtained, and at the 
time he was speaking retained over a lapse of eighty 
years, a vivid recollection of the pattern of his 
nurse's dress. 



18 MR. GLADSTONE. 

Of another member of the domestic household in 
Rodney Street, Liverpool, Mr. Gladstone has a 
charming story. She was a Welsh girl, fresh from 
her mountain home, and confident that all the uni- 
verse moved round Snowdon. It was just after Water- 
loo, and all the talk was of sieges and battles, routs 
and victories. The patriotic Welsh girl made so 
clear to the little Liverpool boy the prominent part 
Wales had played in the Peninsular War, that he 
never forgot it. "She told me," Mr. Gladstone says 
in a voice still unconsciously awestruck, "that Sir 
Watkin Williams Wynn sent millions of men to 
fight Boney. " 

"I am not slow to claim the name of Scotchman,'* 
Mr. Gladstone told a delighted audience at Dundee 
during one of the Midlothian Campaigns, " and, even 
if I were, there is the fact staring me in the face 
that not a drop of blood runs in my veins except 
what is derived from Scottish ancestry." Neverthe- 
less, contiguity to Wales, early in life and late, has 
endeared the Principality to him. "My boyhood," 
he told an audience gathered at Wirral, " was passed 
at the mouth of the Mersey in sight of Wales. In 
those days I was a fervent admirer of Moel Yammau 
and other Welsh mountains. But as to getting into 
Wales, as to getting from Liverpool to Birkenhead, 
that was a formidable affair. You would have to 
hunt about to hire somebody with a little boat, and 
he would have had to put off from the Liverpool side 
and contend with the strong tide of the Mersey as 



BOYHOOD. 19 

best he could. In point of fact, we used to look 
across the Mersey in those days from the Lancashire 
coast to the Cheshire coast very much as a man looks 
now — or rather perhaps with more sense of distance 
than a man looks now — from the Cliffs of Dover, or 
from the pier at Folkestone, across to the Coast of 
France. " 

Here is another glimpse of prehistoric Wales inter- 
esting to the sojourner at Rhyl, Llandudno, and the 
long line of bathing-machine towns that to-day 
cluster on the north coast. " I remember, " says Mr. 
Gladstone, "paying my first visit to North Wales, 
travelling along the North Wales coast as far as 
Bangor and Carnarvon, when there was no such 
thing as a watering-place, no such thing as a house 
to be hired for the purpose of those visits that are 
now paid by thousands of people to such multitudes 
of points all along the coast. It was supposed that 
if ever any body of gentlemen could be found suffi- 
ciently energetic to make a railway to Holyhead, 
that railway could not possibly pierce the country, 
and must be made along the coast, and, if carried 
along the coast, could not possibly be made to pay. 
So firm was that conviction that — I very well recol- 
lect the day — a large and important deputation of 
railway leaders went to London and waited upon Sir 
Robert Peel, who was then Prime Minister, in order 
to demonstrate to him that it was totally impossible 
for them to construct a paying line, and therefore to 
impress upon his mind the necessity of his agreeing 



20 MR. GLADSTONE, 

to give them a considerable grant out of the consoli- 
dated fund. Sir Robert Peel was a very circumspect 
statesman, and not least so in those matters in which 
the public purse was concerned. He encouraged 
them to take a more sanguine view. Whether he 
persuaded them into a more sanguine tone of mind I 
do not know. This I know, the railway was made, 
and we now understand that this humble railway, 
this impossible railway, as it was then conceived, is 
at the present moment the most productive and 
remunerative part of the whole vast system of the 
North Western Company." 

Mr. Gladstone perfectly remembers the old coach- 
ing system, the decay of which before the irresistible 
advance of the steam engine he speaks of not with- 
out regret. " The system was, " he says, " raised to 
the highest degree of perfection, far exceeding that 
or anything of the kind to be met with on the Conti- 
nent." At Eton, between the years 1820 and 1830, 
he went to and from school and home by coach. The 
coaches were changed at Birmingham. "Our coach," 
he says, "used to arrive at Birmingham about three 
or four o'clock in the morning, when we were turned 
out into the open street till it might please a new 
coach with a new equipment to appear. There was 
no building in the town, great or small, public or 
private, at that period, upon which it was possible 
for a rational being to fix his eye with satisfaction. " 

Of later date are his recollections of Edinburgh. 
"I knew Edinburgh in the days of Lord Moncreilf, 



BOYHOOD. 21 

of Dr. Gordon, of Dr. Thomson, of Bishop Sandford, 
and of many very remarkable men. I had the honor 
of having spent many weeks In Edinburgh and its 
neighborhood with a man whose name will always 
remain illustrious as perhaps the most distinguished 
son and greatest ornament of the Presbyterian sys- 
tem — I mean Dr. Chalmers. I have heard Dr. 
Chalmers preach and lecture, and I think 1 have 
heard him converse. Being a man entirely of Scotch 
blood, I am very much attached to Scotland and like 
even the Scotch accent. But not the Scotch accent 
of Dr. Chalmers. Undoubtedly in preaching and 
delivery it was a considerable impediment. Not- 
withstanding that, it was all overborne by the power 
of the man in preaching, overborne by his power 
which melted into harmony with all the adjuncts and 
incidents of the man as a whole ; so much so that, 
although I would have said that the accent of Dr. 
Chalmers was distasteful, yet in Dr. Chalmers him- 
self I would not have altered it in the smallest 
degree. " 

"It is hardly an exaggeration to say," Mr. Glad- 
stone observed, speaking at Dundee in 1890, " that 
at the time when I was a youth of ten or fifteen years 
of age, there was hardly anything that was beautiful 
produced in this country. I remember at a period 
of my life, when I was about eighteen, I was taken 
over to see a silk factory in Macclesfield. At that 
time Mr. Huskisson, whose name ought always to be 
remembered with respect among all sound econo- 



22 MR. GLADSTONE. 

mists, and the Government of Lord Liverpool had 
been making the first efforts, not to break down — 
that was reserved for their happier followers — but 
to lessen, to modify, or perhaps I should say to 
mitigate, a little if possible the protective system. 
Down to the period of Mr. Huskisson silk handker- 
chiefs from France were prohibited. They were 
largely smuggled, and no gentleman went over to 
Paris without, if he could manage it, bringing back 
in his pockets, his purse, his portmanteau, his hat, 
or his great-coat, handkerchiefs and gloves. But 
Mr. Huskisson carried a law in which, in lieu of this 
prohibition o£ these French articles, a duty of thirty 
per cent was imposed on them, and it is in my recol- 
lection that there was a keener detestation of Mr. 
Huskisson, and a more violent passion roused against 
him in consequence of that mild, initial measure 
than ever was associated in the other camp, in the 
Protectionist camp, within the career of Cobden and 
Bright. I was taken to this manufactory, and they 
produced the English silk handkerchief they were in 
the habit of making, and which they thought it cruel 
to be competed with by the silk handkerchiefs of 
France, although even before they were allowed to 
compete the French manufacturer had to pay the fine 
of thirty per cent on the value. It was in that first 
visit to a manufactory in Macclesfield that — I will 
not say I became a Free Trader, for it was ten or 
fifteen years later when I entered into the full faith 
of that policy — but from what I saw then there 



BOYHOOD. 23 

dawned upon my mind the first ray of light. What 
I thought when they showed me these handkerchiefs 
was, ' How detestable they really are, and what 
in the world can be the object of coaxing, nurs- 
ing, coddling up manufacturers to produce goods 
such as those which you ought to be ashamed of 
exhibiting. ' " 



CHAPTER II. 

HIS KINSFOLK. 

Sir Bernard Burke, who has great success in trac- 
ing far-reaching lineages for men who achieve 
greatness, has been able to find the blood of Henry 
III. of England and Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, 
in the veins of Mr. Gladstone. Still more interest- 
ing, possibly more authentic, is a memorandum I 
find in a note addressed to me by the late Mr. W. H. 
Gladstone. Writing from Hawarden Rectory, under 
date November 13th, 1881, he says: "Through my 
mother's mother, who was a Neville (Mary, daughter 
of the second Lord Braybrooke) my father becomes 
connected with Lord Chatham, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. 
Grenville, former Prime Ministers, and Mr. Wind- 
ham, former Chancellor of the Exchequer." 

Mr. Gladstone's father was a merchant in Liver- 
pool, whither he had gone from Leith, where Thomas 
Gladstone, grandfather of William, had established 
himself as a corn-merchant. The Gladstones have, 
as far as records go, been remarkable for large 
families. Mr. Gladstone's great-grandfather (who, 
by the way, spelled his name " Gledstanes '') had 
eleven children. His fourth son, Thomas, had six- 
teen ; and it will best indicate the social and com- 
mercial position of Mr, Gladstone's grandfather to 



HIS KINSFOLK. 25 

record the fact that he was able to " do something " 
for his seven surviving sons as they successively 
started in business. 

John Gladstone, the father of William Ewart, did 
not hide his talent in a napkin. At an early age he 
settled in Liverpool as a sort of clerk in the house 
of Corrie & Co., a firm in which he presently became 
a partner. When, some sixteen years later, the firm 
of Corrie, Gladstone & Bradshaw was dissolved, 
John Gladstone took into partnership his brother 
Robert, and began with fresh ardor to extend his 
commercial operations. The new firm were among 
the earliest traders with Russia, and they snatched 
at the East India trade when the monopoly of the old 
East India Company was broken down. But their 
principal business was with the West Indies, where 
John Gladstone held large sugar plantations, — a 
circumstance which, as we shall see, had a good deal 
to do with moulding the early political career of his 
illustrious son. 

Mr. Gladstone was proudly fond of his father. 
When he sojourned in St. James's Square in the 
closing years of his residence in London he had hung 
up in the dining-room a portrait of his father, 
brought from Hawarden, one of his few personal 
possessions in the hired mansion. Speaking about 
him at Leith, where John Gladstone had served an 
apprenticeship in his father's office, he said : " I will 
not dwell at length upon the personal portraiture of 
my father. I may presume perhaps to say this, that 



26 MR. GLADSTONE. 

while it is only for the world to look upon him 
mainly in the light of an active and successful mer- 
chant, who, like many merchants of the country, 
distinguished himself by an energetic philanthropy, 
so far as his children are concerned, when they 
think of him they can remember nothing except his 
extraordinary claims upon their profound gratitude 
and affection." 

In a later year the illustrious son drew this graphic 
picture of a strong individuality : " His eye was not 
dim, nor his natural force abated. He was full of 
bodily and mental vigor. Whatsoever his hand 
found to do, he did it with his might. He could 
not understand or tolerate those who, perceiving an 
object to be good, did not at once actively pursue it. 
With all this energy he joined a corresponding 
warmth and, so to speak, eagerness of affection, a 
keen appreciation of humor, in which he found a 
rest, and an indescribable frankness and simplicity 
of character, which, crowning his own qualities, 
made him, I think (and I strive to think impartially), 
nearly, or quite, the most interesting old man I have 
ever known. " 

The Gladstones as a family always had a supera- 
bundance of energy, which carried their action 
beyond the limits of their private concerns. We 
find some of the earlier heads of the family respon- 
sible Kirk elders. John Gladstone, brought into 
contact at a critical epoch with the active life of a 
growing community like that of Liverpool, soon 



mS KINSFOLK. 27 

began to take a prominent part in public affairs. 
When, in 1812, Canning fought a famous election in 
Liverpool, he threw himself heart and soul into the 
advocacy of the cause of the great Minister. He 
addressed public meetings on his behalf, and it was 
from the balcony of his house in Rodney Street that 
Mr. Canning spoke to the enthusiastic crowd who, 
as the result of the election, hailed him Member for 
Liverpool. 

There was in the house at the time a little boy 
destined to fill a larger space in history even than 
Canning. William Ewart Gladstone was in his 
third year at this time, and doubtless from some 
upper window looked out with wondering eyes on the 
turbulent crowd, and heard the Minister talking of 
Catholic Emancipation and other strange matters. 
In fact, we have his personal testimony on this inter- 
esting point. On the 29th December, 1879, on the 
occasion of his reaching his seventieth year, Mr. 
Gladstone received at Hawarden a deputation of 
Liverpool gentlemen, who brought hearty congratu- 
lations and a costly present. In the course of his 
acknowledgment he said : " You have referred to my 
connection with Liverpool, and it has happened to 
me singularly enough to have the incidents of my 
personality, the association of my personality, if I 
may so speak, curiously divided between the Scotch 
extraction, which is purely and absolutely Scotch as 
to every drop of blood in my veins, and, on the other 
hand, a nativity in Liverpool, which is the scene of 



28 MR. GLADSTONE. 

my earliest recollections. And very early those 
recollections are, for I remember, gentlemen, what 
none of you could possibly recollect : I remember the 
first election of Mr. Canning in Liverpool." 

That was in 1812, a far cry to 1879. The review 
becomes the more imposing when we reflect what a 
foremost part Mr. Gladstone had taken in moulding 
the momentous events that have happened between 
the two dates. "Washington," he once said, "is to 
my mind the purest figure in history. " But of all 
the great men with whom Mr. Gladstone has at one 
time or another come into personal contact, he prob- 
ably retained the greatest admiration and reverence 
for Canning. " I was bred under the shadow of the 
great name of Canning," he one night told the House 
of Commons. "Every influence connected with that 
name governed the politics of my childhood and of 
my youth. With Canning I rejoiced in the removal 
of religious disabilities, and in the character which 
he gave to our policy abroad. With Canning I 
rejoiced in the opening he made towards the estab- 
lishment of free commercial interchanges between 
nations. With Canning, and under the shadow of 
that great name, and under the shadow of the yet 
more venerable name of Burke, my youthful mind 
and imagination were impressed." 

John Gladstone entered Parliament some years 
later. I do not know whether he heard the maiden 
speech of the member for Newark, but he certainly 
sat in the same Parliament with his son, and lived 



HIS KINSFOLK. 29 

long enough to see the magnificent promise of his 
youth partially realized. In 1845 Sir Robert Peel, 
partly in recognition of personal merit, doubtless in 
compliment to the brilliant young colleague who was 
the bright particular star of his Ministry, made the 
elder Gladstone a baronet. Six years later, in the 
year of the Great Exhibition, Sir John died, mourned 
by troops of friends, full of years and honors and 
riches. 

The title went to Thomas, his eldest son. Whilst 
he lived no one out of the limits of the county of 
Kincardine knew or heard of Sir Thomas Gladstone. 
Sometimes during the Parliamentary Session people 
passing through the lobby of the House of Commons 
were startled at the sight of a tall spare figure, with 
a face singularly like Mr. Gladstone's, if one could 
imagine it with the fire gone out. A quiet, retiring 
country gentleman. Sir Thomas Gladstone, on rare 
visits to London, flitted about the precincts of 
the House of Commons, silent, unnoticing, and un- 
noticed, — a sort of wraith of his brother. 

There was another brother, who lived in Liverpool, 
and maintained the commercial relations of the 
Gladstone family. This was Robertson, a man who, 
though he took a fair share of the work of local 
government in the town, did not aspire to deal with 
affairs outside the limits of the borough. There was 
an occasion, not likely to be forgotten by Mr. Glad- 
stone's detractors, when Robertson, moved with 
honest indignation and fraternal love, employed a 



30 MR. GLADSTONE. 

maladroit trope when discussing the public position 
of his brother. After this he was confirmed in his 
natural inclination to retirement from participation 
in political affairs and, in 1875 there passed away 
from human sight for all time the colossal burly 
figure which, with hands hidden in stupendous waist- 
coat pockets, long strode the streets of Liverpool. 

We have hardly got William Ewart Gladstone out 
of petticoats yet, but having gone thus far in detailed 
description of his family belongings, it may be con- 
venient finally to dispose of this branch of the sub- 
ject. In 1839 he married Miss Catherine Glynne, 
daughter of Sir Stephen Glynne, of Hawarden Castle, 
Flintshire, which became in time the most familiar 
postal address in the world. He had eight children. 
One, the second daughter, died in 1850. His eldest 
daughter is married to the head-master of Wellington 
College, a younger one to the Rev. Mr. Drew. A 
third, unmarried, is Principal of Newnham College, 
Cambridge. 

Of his four sons the eldest, William Henry, sat in 
one House of Commons as Member for Whitby, in 
another representing East Worcestershire. A man 
of gentle and retiring disposition, he did not take 
kindly to the turmoil of politics, and when oppor- 
tunity presented itself, gratefully withdrew. The 
second son is Rector of Hawarden. In 1875 the 
torrent of abuse to which Mr. Gladstone was sub- 
jected took, in a somewhat obscure London weekly 
paper, the line of accusation that the ex-Premier had 



HIS KINSFOLK. 31 

presented his son, ordained in 1870, to one of the 
richest and easiest livings of the Church. This was 
a statement that might well have been passed over 
in silence. It touched Mr. Gladstone to the quick. 
He wrote : " This easy living entailed the charge of 
8,000 people scattered over 17,000 acres, and fast 
increasing in number. The living is not in the gift 
of the Crown. I did not present him to the living 
or recommend him to be presented. He was not 
ordained in 1870. My relations," he proudly and 
truthfully added, "have no special cause to thank 
me for any advice given by me to the Sovereign in 
the matter of Church patronage." 

His third son, Henry, followed the early family 
traditions by entering upon commercial pursuits, 
spending some years in India. He married the 
daughter of Lord Rendel, and still stands apart from 
politics. The only born politician among the sons 
is the youngest. Mr. Herbert Gladstone made his 
first appearance in the political arena by gallantly 
contesting Middlesex in April, 1880. Defeated 
there, he was returned for Leeds two months later, 
and still represents a Leeds Division in the House 
of Commons. For a while he acted as Private Secre- 
tary to his father the Premier, though he received 
no salary. He became in succession a Lord of the 
Treasury and Financial Secretary to the War Office, 
the Secretaryship to the Home Office being the high- 
est post to which his omnipotent father promoted 
him. Upon Mr. Gladstone's retirement in 1894, 



32 MR. GLADSTONE. 

colleagues who had long worked with Mr. Herbert 
Gladstone made haste to do him fuller justice, pro- 
moting him to the position of First Commissioner of 
Works. 

A singularly modest record this of the family of 
an illustrious statesman, four times Chief Minister 
of a nation whose wealth is illimitable, whose power 
reaches to the ends of the earth. We are, happily, 
so accustomed in England to find our statesmen free 
from the charge of nepotism, that we take Mr. Glad- 
stone's innocence as a matter of course. But few 
more suggestive chapters in his history could be 
written than that which shows the son of a man, 
who has made many bishops, rector of the family 
parish in Flintshire ; one of his daughters mar- 
ried to a schoolmaster; a second herself a school- 
mistress, whilst another of his sons long sat at an 
office desk. 

When not in London engaged in Ministerial or 
political business Mr. Gladstone has dwelt among 
his own people in his Flintshire home. Of Hawar- 
den Castle, its history and its belongings, I may 
quote further from an interesting communication 
addressed to me in 1881 by the late Mr, W. H. 
Gladstone : — 

The estate of Hawarden was purchased by Serjeant 
Glynne from the agents of Sequestration after the 
execution of James Earl of Derby in 1651. It came 
first into the Stanley family in 1443, when it was 
granted by Henry YI. to Sir Thomas Stanley, Comp- 



HIS KINSFOLK. 33 

troller of his Household. This grant was recalled 
in 1450, but in 1454 it was restored to Sir Thomas, 
afterwards Lord Stanley. After his death it de- 
scended to his second wife, Margaret Countess of 
Richmond ; on whose decease it returned to Thomas 
Earl of Derby, and remained in that family till 
1651. 

On the Restoration, when the Commons rejected 
the Bill for restoring the estates of those lords which 
had been alienated in the late usurpation, Charles 
Earl of Derby compounded with Serjeant Glynne for 
the property of Hawarden and granted it to him and 
his heirs. 

The old Castle was possessed by the Parliament in 
1643, being betrayed to Sir William Brereton, but 
was besieged soon after by the Royalists, and sur- 
rendered to Sir Michael Earnley, December 5th, 
1643. The Royalists held it till 1645, when it was 
taken by General Mytton. It was soon after dis- 
mantled, and its further destruction effected by its 
owner. Sir William Glynne, in 1665. 

There is no tradition of the Earls of Derby making 
the Castle their residence subsequent to the death of 
the Countess of Richmond; but it is certain that it 
was not rendered untenable till dismantled by final 
order of the Parliament in 1647. 

The Glynne family were first heard of at Glyn 
Llyvon, in Carnarvonshire, in 1567. A knighthood 
was conferred on Sir William, father of Serjeant, 
afterwards Chief Justice, Glynne. Sir William, 

3 



34 MR. GLADSTONE. 

son of the Chief Justice (who also sat in Parliament 
for Carnarvonshire in 1660), was created a Baronet 
in 1661, during his father's lifetime. About this 
date the family became connected with Oxfordshire, 
and did not reside at Hawarden till 1727, when Sir 
Stephen, second Baronet, built a house there. A 
new one was, however, built shortly after, in 1752 
by Sir John Glynne, who, by an alliance with 
the family of Ravenscroft, acquired the adjoining 
property of Broadlane. This house, then called 
Broadlane House, is the kernel of the present resi- 
dence known as Hawarden Castle. Sir John Glynne 
(sixth Baronet) applied himself to improving and 
developing the property on a large scale by inclos- 
ing, draining, and planting; and under him the 
estate grew to its present aspect and dimensions. 
(The park contains some 200 acres; the plantations 
cover about 500. The whole estate is upwards of 
7,000.) In 1809 the house, built of brick, was much 
enlarged and cased in stone in the castellated style, 
and under the name it now bears. Further improve- 
ments were made by the late Sir Stephen Glynne in 
1831. The new block, however, containing Mr. 
Gladstone's study, was not added till 1864. 

Mr. Gladstone's room has three windows and two 
fireplaces and is completely lined with bookcases. 
There are three writing-tables in it. The first Mr. 
Gladstone uses for political, the second for literary 
work (Homeric and other) when engaged upon such. 
The third is occupied by Mrs. Gladstone. The room 



HIS KINSFOLK. 35 

has busts and other likenesses of Sidney Herbert, 
Duke of Newcastle, Tennyson, Canning, Cobden, 
Homer, and others. In a corner may be seen a 
specimen of an axe from Nottingham, the blade of 
which is singularly long and narrow, and contrasts 
strongly with the American pattern, to which Mr. 
Gladstone is much addicted. 

Mr. Gladstone sold his collections of china and pic- 
tures in 1874, retaining, however, those of ivories and 
antique jewels, exhibited at South Kensington and 
elsewhere. 

His library contains over 10,000 volumes, and is 
very rich in theology. Separate departments are as- 
signed in it to Homer, Shakespeare, and Dante. 

Chief portraits in the house are those of Sir Kenelm 
Digby, by Yandyck, an ancestor of Honora Conway, 
Sir John Glynne's wife ; Lady Lucy Stanley, daughter 
of Thomas Earl of Northumberland, mother to Sir K. 
Digby's wife ; Jane Warburton, afterwards Duchess 
of Argyll, great-granddaughter to Chief Justice 
Glynne ; Sir William Glynne, first Baronet, ascribed 
to Sir Peter Lely ; Chief Justice Glynne as a young 
man, and another in his judicial robes ; Lady Sandys, 
grandmother to Sir William Glynne's wife ; Lady 
Wheler, daughter of Sir Stephen Glynne; Sir John 
Glynne with Honora Conway his wife, holding a draw- 
ing of the new house at Broadlane ; Sir Robert 
Williams, of Penrhyn, who married a daughter of the 
Chief Justice ; Catherine Grenville, afterwards Lady 
Braybrooke and mother of Lady Glynne ; Mrs. Glad- 



36 MR. GLADSTONE. 

stone, by Saye ; Lady Lyttelton, by Saye ; the late 
Sir Stephen, by Roden ; Mr. Gladstone's own portrait, 
by W. B. Richmond ; Viscountess Vane, nee Hawes ; 
Charles I., Henrietta Maria his Queen, and Charles II., 
copies from Vandyck ; and several others, one attrib- 
uted to Gainsborough. There are busts of Pitt, Sir 
John Glynne, Rev. Henry Glynne, Mrs. Gladstone, 
Mr. Gladstone by Marochetti, and other statuary. 

The late Sir Stephen left a good topographical 
library, and himself compiled an account of nearly all 
the old parish churches in the kingdom. He died a 
bachelor, much beloved and lamented, in 1874. 



CHAPTER III. 

MEMBER FOR NEWARK. 

Mr. Gladstone had not reached his twelfth birth- 
day when he arrived at Eton. The date of his entry 
in the school-books is September, 1821. Fifty-seven 
years later he returned to Eton and lectured to the 
newer boys. " My attachment to Eton," he told them, 
" increases with the lapse of years. ■ It is the Queen 
of Schools." Among his contemporaries was that 
Selwyn, afterward Bishop of Lichfield and missionary 
in New Zealand, to whose splendid life his old school- 
fellow long time later found occasion to pay a glowing 
tribute. Mackworth Praed, Chauncey Hare Towns- 
hend, F. H. Doyle, and A. H. Hallam were also at 
Eton with Mr. Gladstone. 

The lad learned all that was to be learned in the 
Eton of those days. School studies left him many 
spare hours, and his restless energy found more or 
less adequate channels of escape in literature. He 
started a College journal, the Eton Miscellany, and 
chiefly wrote it himself. He was equal to either prose 
or verse, embarking, inter alia, upon a tremendous 
poem laudatory of Richard Coeur de Lion. There are 
some lines in this school-boy flight which, without 
violence, might be adapted to Mr. Gladstone's out- 



38 MR. GLADSTONE. 

break, at the time of the Bulgarian Atrocities, from a 
briefly enforced state of quietude. " Who foremost 
now ? " the jacketed small boy asks in this tremend- 
ous poem — 

Who foremost now the deadly spear to dart, 
And strike the jav'lin to the Moslem's heart; 
Who foremost now to climb the 'leaguered wall, 
The first to triumph or the first to fall ? 

But the young poet of this date had no prophetic 
vision of the future. His thoughts were full of 
Richard " stalking along the blood-dyed plain " and 
" bathing his hands in Moslem blood." 

The youth left Eton in December, 1827, and after 
studying for six months with Dr. Turner, afterward 
Bishop of Calcutta, went to Christ Church, Oxford. 
How well he worked is evidenced by the fact that, 
going up for examination in 1831, he gained the high- 
est honors of the Univei'sity, graduating Double First. 

In the course of time he came to represent his 
Alma Mater in the House of Commons, in time to 
be dismissed peremptorily, if not with ignominy. It 
was characteristic of him that, going down to Man- 
chester just after his defeat at Oxford, he made the 
earliest use of his unmuzzled opportunities to sing 
the praises of Oxford. *' I have," he said, "loved the 
University of Oxford with a deep and passionate 
love ; and so I shall love ifc to the end. If my affec- 
tion is of the smallest advantage to that great, that 
ancient, that noble institution, that advantage, such as 
it is, and it is most insignificant, Oxford will possess 
as long as I live." 



MEMBER FOR NEWARK. 39 

Newman was a great force at Oxford when the 
future member for the University was undergraduate. 
" At that time," Mr. Gladstone says, "before the era 
of the controversies with which he is connected, New- 
man, with his deep piety and his remarkable gifts of 
mind, was a great object of interest. He was looked 
upon rather with prejudice as what is termed a Low 
Churchman, but was very much respected for his 
character and his known ability. He was then the 
Vicar of St. Mary's at Oxford, and used to preach 
there. Without ostentation or effort, by simple ex- 
cellence, he was constantly drawing undergraduates 
more and more around him. Newman's manner in 
the pulpit was one about which, if you considered it 
in its separate parts, you would arrive at very un- 
satisfactory conclusions. There was not very much 
change in the inflection of the voice ; action there was 
none. His sermons were read, and his eyes were 
always on his book. All that,^ it may be said, is against 
the efficacy of preaching. But taking the man as a 
whole, there was a stamp and seal upon him. There 
was a solemn music and sweetness in the tone. There 
was a completeness in the figure, taken together with 
the tone and with the manner, which made even his de- 
livery, such as I have described it, and though exclu- 
sively with written sermons, singularly attractive." 

Naturally Mr. Gladstone was attracted during his 
residence in the University by the opportunities of 
debate offered by the Oxford Union, in which he 
rapidly rose to the proud position of president. The 



40 MR. GLADSTONE. 

outer world at this time was moved by the passion of 
Parliamentary Reform. Lord John Russell had just 
brought forward in the House of Commons the first 
Ministerial Measure of Reform. The Oxford Union 
had, of course, something to say on this momentous 
question, and it is interesting to find in the minutes 
of the Club an amendment, moved by William Ewart 
Gladstone, to the effect that " The Ministry has un- 
wisely introduced and most unscru}3ulously forwarded 
a measure which threatens not only to change our form 
of government, but ultimately to break up the very 
foundation of social order, as well as materially to 
forward the views of those who are pursuing this 
project throughout the civilized world." 

Mr. Gladstone was in Italy when the summons 
came in obedience to which he placed his foot on the 
first rung of the ladder of fame. It was the year 
1832. The Reform Bill had just been passed, and 
the United Kingdom was in the throes of expecta- 
tion as to what might follow on the summoning of 
the first Reformed Parliament. It was the Duke 
of Newcastle, registered owner of the borough of 
Newark, who was instrumental in bringing Mr. 
Gladstone into the House of Commons. In a con- 
versation which took place upon the hustings on the 
day of nomination, there is something eminently 
characteristic of Mr. Gladstone as he was known to 
a later generation. 

A matter-of-fact elector, who probably did not 
rent his house or shop from the Duke, asked the 



MEMBER FOR NEWARK. 41 

young candidate " Whether he was not the Duke of 
Newcastle 's nominee ? " This was an exceedingly 
embarrassing question. If the candidate said "No," 
he would be convicted, within every man's knowl- 
edge, of a falsehood. If he said "Yes," what a 
farce was this nomination and bustle at the poll ! 
But Mr. Gladstone, though an exceedingly young 
bird at this date, was not to be caught by chaff. He 
asked the honorable elector to do him the favor of 
defining the term nominee. The unwary elector fell 
into the trap, and Mr. Gladstone was, of course, able 
to declare that in such a sense he was not the Duke's 
nominee. As a matter of fact he certainly was, and 
the preponderance of the Duke's influence was indi- 
cated by his being returned at the head of the poll. 

Mr. Gladstone's address to the electors of Newark 
has peculiar value as indicating precisely the politi- 
cal platform from which the great social, religious, 
and political Liberator sprung. It is also interest- 
ing as showing how this marvellously subtle mind 
is able to make the worse appear the better reason, 
and how ingeniously he argues to convince the elec- 
tors of Newark and himself. The document, dated 
9th October, 1831, runs thus : — 

"Having now completed my canvass, I think it my 
duty as well to remind you of the principles on 
which I have solicited your votes, as freely to assure 
my friends that its result has placed my success 
beyond a doubt. I have not requested your favor on 
the ground of adherence to the opinions of any man 



42 MR. GLADSTONE. 

or party, further than such adherence can be fairly 
understood, from the conviction I have not hesitated 
to avow, that we must watch and resist that unin- 
quiring and undiscriminating desire for change 
among us, which threatens to produce, along with 
partial good, a melancholy preponderance of mis- 
chief — which I am persuaded would aggravate be- 
yond computation the deep-seated evils of our social 
state, and the heavy burdens of our industrial classes 
— which by disturbing our peace, destroys confi- 
dence, and strikes at the root of prosperity. Thus 
it has done already; and thus we must therefore 
believe it will do. For the mitigation of those 
evils we must, I think, look not only to particular 
measures, but to the restoration of sounder general 
principles. I mean especially that principle oq 
which alone the incorporation of Religion with the 
State, in our Constitution, can be defended; that the 
duties of governors are strictly and peculiarly relig- 
ious, and that legislatures, like individuals, are 
bound to carry throughout their acts the spirit of the 
high truths they have acknowledged. Principles are 
now arrayed against our institutions, and not by 
truckling nor by temporizing — not by oppression or 
corruption — but by principles they must be met. 
Among their first results should be a sedulous and 
special attention to the interests of the poor, founded 
upon the rule that those who are the least able to 
take care of themselves should be most regarded by 
others. Particularly it is a duty to endeavor by 



MEMBER FOR NEWARK. 43 

every means that labor may receive adequate remun- 
eration; which, unhappily, among several classes of 
our fellow-countrymen, is not now the case. What- 
ever measures, therefore, whether by correction of the 
poor laws, allotment of cottage ground, or otherwise, 
tend to promote this object, I deem entitled to the 
warmest support, with all such as are calculated to 
revive sound moral conduct in any class of society. 
I proceed to the momentous question of slavery, 
which I have found entertained among you in that 
candid and temperate spirit which alone befits its 
nature, or promises to remove its difficulties. If I 
have not recognized the right of an irresponsible 
society to interpose between me and the electors, it 
has not been from any disrespect to its members, 
nor from unwillingness to answer theirs {sic) or 
any other questions on which the electors may desire 
to know my views. To the esteemed secretary of the 
society I submitted my reasons for silence; and I 
made a point of stating these views to him, in his 
character of a voter. As regards the abstract law- 
fulness of slavery, I acknowledge it simply as import- 
ing the right of one man to the labour of another ; 
and I rest it upon the fact that Scripture, the para- 
mount authority upon such a point, gives directions 
to the persons standing in the relation of master to 
slave for their conduct in the relation; whereas, 
were the matter absolutely and necessarily sinful, 
it would not regulate the manner. Assuming sin as 
the cause of degradation, it strives, and strives most 



44 MR. GLADSTONE. 

effectually, to cure the latter by extirpating the 
former. We are agreed that both the physical and 
the moral bondage of the slave are to be abolished. 
The question is as to the order, and the order only; 
now Scripture attacks the moral evil before the tem- 
poral one, and the temporal through the moral one, 
and I am content with the order which Scripture has 
established. To this end I desire to see immediately 
set on foot, by impartial and sovereign authority, a 
universal and efficient system of Christian instruc- 
tion, not intended to resist designs of individual 
piety and wisdom, for the religious improvement of 
the negroes, but to do thoroughly what they can only 
do partially. As regards immediate emancipation, 
whether with or without compensation, there are 
several minor reasons against it; but that which 
weighs with me is, that it would, I much fear, 
exchange evils now affecting the negro for others 
which are weightier — for a relapse into deeper de- 
basement, if not for bloodshed and internal war. 
Let fitness be made a condition for emancipation; 
and let us strive to bring him to that fitness by the 
shortest possible course. Let him enjoy the means 
of earning his freedom through honest, industrious 
habits; thus the same instruments which attain his 
liberty shall likewise render him competent to use 
it ; and thus I earnestly trust without risk of blood, 
without violation of property, with unimpaired bene- 
fit to the negro, and with the utmost speed which 
prudence will admit we shall arrive at that exceed- 



MEMBER FOR NEWARK. 45 

ingly desirable consummation, the utter extinction 
of Slavery. And now, gentlemen, as regards the 
enthusiasm with which you have rallied round your 
ancient flag, and welcomed the humble representa- 
tive of those principles whose emblem it is, I trust 
that neither the lapse of time nor the seductions of 
prosperity can efface it from my memory. To my 
opponents my acknowledgments are due for the good- 
humor and kindness with which they have received 
me ; and while I would thank my friends for their 
zealous and unwearied exertions in my favor, I 
briefly, but emphatically, assure them that if prom- 
ises be an adequate foundation of confidence, or 
experience a reasonable ground of calculation, our 
victory is sure." 

Mr. Gladstone's maiden speech in the House of 
Commons was made in defence of the domestic insti- 
tution of slavery. It was a burning question at the 
time he entered Parliament, and his views were 
naturally tinged by the circumstance that his father 
owned many slaves in Demerara. To denounce the 
institution of slavery was to impugn the humanity 
of his father. • In fact, a personal reference had been 
made to Mr. John Gladstone in the course of the de- 
bate on the abolition of slavery. We next find him 
appearing as the advocate of that estimable body of 
politicians, the Freemen of Liverpool, who were 
threatened witli extinction consequent upon a too 
open exercise of their alleged right to do what they 
liked with their own — that is to say, to get as much 



46 MPx,. GLADSTONE. 

as possible for their votes. We further find this 
uncompromising young Tory resisting an attempt to 
deal with the temporalities of the Church of Ireland 
and opposing Mr. Hume in his effort to open the 
Universities to Nonconformists. 

Sir Eobert Peel had taken note of the young mem- 
ber for Newark, and when, in the last days of 1834, 
he undertook to form a Ministry in succession to 
that of Lord Melbourne, he offered Mr. Gladstone 
the post of Junior Lord of the Treasury. This was 
a tolerable success for a young man in the twenty- 
fifth year of his age, and at the close of his second 
Parliamentary Session. But it was the prelude to 
even more rapid advancement. Parliament had 
scarcely met for the Session of 1835, when he was 
installed in the office of Under-Secretary for the 
Colonies. 

Here is a charming leaf of autobiography contrib- 
uted by Mr. Gladstone in the course of a letter 
prefacing a Life of the Earl of Aberdeen: "On an 
evening in the month of January, 1835, I was sent 
for by Sir Robert Peel, and received from him the 
offer, which I accepted, of the Under-Secretaryship 
of the Colonies. From him I went on to Lord Aber- 
deen, who was thus to be, in official home-talk, my 
master. I may confess that I went in fear and 
trembling. I knew Lord Aberdeen only by public 
rumor. Distinction of itself, naturally and properly, 
rather alarms the young. I had heard of his high 
character ; but I had also heard of him as a man of 



MEMBER FOR NEWARK. 47 

cold manners, close and even haughty reserve. It 
was dusk when I entered his room, — the one on the 
first floor, with the bow-window looking to the Park, 
— so that I saw his figure rather than his counte- 
nance. I do not recollect the matter of the conver- 
sation ; but I well remember that, before I had been 
three minutes with him, all my apprehensions had 
melted away like snow in the sun. I came away 
from that interview, conscious indeed — as who 
could fail to be conscious ? — of his dignity, but of a 
dignity so tempered by a peculiar purity and gentle- 
ness, and so associated with impressions of his kind- 
ness, and even friendship, that I believe I felt more 
about the wonder of his being at that time so mis- 
understood by the outer world, than about the new 
duties and responsibilities of my new office." 

The young Minister lost no time in bringing in his 
first Bill, a measure designed to improve the condi- 
tion of passengers in merchant vessels. The Minis- 
try was, however, too short-lived for this humble 
effort to be added to the accomplishments of the 
statute-book. Mr. Gladstone's young hopes received 
a temporary blow from contact with the question of 
the Irish Church, which exercised so important an 
influence on later stages of his career. It was on a 
resolution containing the nucleus of the Irish Church 
Bill of 1869 that the first Ministry of which he 
formed a member was defeated, and forced to resign. 

For the next five or six years Mr. Gladstone 
remained in opposition with his great chief. But 



48 MR. GLADSTONE, 

though out of office he was not idle. He spoke fre- 
quently in debates, and the growth of his position in 
the country is testified to by the fact that in 1837, 
being in his twenty-eighth year, he was invited to 
stand as the Tory candidate for Manchester. He 
declined the proposal, but was nevertheless run, and 
polled a considerable number of votes. It was at 
this period of his career that Lord Macaulay described 
him in a famous sentence as " a young man of un- 
blemished character, and of distinguished Parliamen- 
tary talents, the rising hope of those stern and 
unbending Tories who follow reluctantly and mutin- 
ously a leader whose experience and eloquence are 
indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper 
and moderate opinions they abhor." This was, as 
every one knows, written apropos of Mr. Gladstone's 
essay on "The State in its Relations with the 
Church ; " a work the theory of which Macaulay has 
described as based upon the proposition that the pro- 
pagation of religious truth is one of the chief ends 
of government. 

This pious political tract gave great joy to Oxford, 
to which "fountain of blessings spiritual, social, and 
intellectual," it was dedicated. Oxford did not for- 
get the compliment when, eight years later, a change 
in the political opinions of the member for Newark 
necessitated his looking out for another seat. In 
other directions than that of literature and the 
Church, the rising hope of the stern, unbending 
Tories justified the description of the Edinburgh 



MEMBER FOR NEWARK. 49 

reviewer. We find him at this period lending the 
weight of his eloquence and the force of his genius 
to stopping the progress of Reform in whatever direc- 
tion it was urged. He opposed a Ministerial scheme 
for dealing with the Church rates in deference to 
the views of Dissenters. He passionately defended 
negro apprenticeship, the last vestige of slavery per- 
mitted in the West Indies. He opposed a scheme of 
national education in which, as Lord Morpeth put it, 
" it was declared to be the duty of the State to pro- 
vide education for Dissenters so long as it fingered 
their gold," and he fought hard in the long battle 
against the Bill designed to remove the civil disa- 
bilities of Jews. He was always thorough, and 
being, in these days of partially developed intelli- 
gence, a Tory, he battled under the Tory flag with 
the same impetuous vigor as in fuller manhood he 
brought to the effort in pulling it down. 



CHAPTEE lY. 

CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 

In 1841 Sir Robert Peel was back in power, bring- 
ing with him the " young man of unblemished char- 
acter," whom Lord Macaulay, perhaps not altogether 
without spite, spoke of as a rival, but in whom the 
large-minded statesman saw nothing but a promising 
pupil and friend. To Sir Robert Peel Mr. Gladstone 
had transferred some of that enthusiastic homage he 
had in boyhood paid to Canning. "It is," he said, 
speaking at Manchester three years after the death 
of his old chief, "easy to enumerate many charac- 
teristics of the greatness of Sir Robert Peel. It is 
easy to speak of his ability, of his sagacity, of his 
indefatigable industry. But there was something 
yet more admirable than the immense intellectual 
endowments with which it had pleased the Almighty 
to gift him, and that was his sense of public virtue, 
it was his purity of conscience, it was his determi- 
nation to follow the public good, it was that disposi- 
tion in him which, when he had to choose between 
personal ease and enjoyment, or again, on the other 
hand, between political power and distinction and 
what he knew to be the welfare of the nation, his 
choice was made at once. When his choice was 
made no man ever saw him hesitate, no man ever 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 51 

saw him hold back from that which was necessary to 
give it effect. " 

Returning to the subject, speaking at Sunderland 
in 1862, Mr. Gladstone said : " No lapse of time can 
ever efface from the recollection of his countrymen 
the service he performed, and the character by which 
those services were illustrated and adorned. No re- 
collection of public life can ever be dearer to me than 
to have been associated with him, and to have had a 
share in giving effect to his convictions during the 
course of now more than twenty years. To him I owe 
it that my mind was first directed to those economical 
and commercial questions the disposal and solution of 
which will fill so large and honorable a page in the 
history of the present age. And of him I will venture 
to say that, great as were his intellectual qualities, 
comprehensive and far-sighted as were his views, dis- 
tinguished as were the firmness and the courage with 
which he sustained them, not even those intellectual 
qualities were more remarkable in the eyes of those to 
whom he was intimately known than what I will call 
the splendor and the purity of his public virtues." 

To the Parliament summoned in 1841 Mr. Gladstone 
was again returned as member for Newark, this time 
as the colleague of Lord John Manners. In the 
Ministry he held two offices, that of Master of the 
Mint and Vice-President of the Board of Trade. 

In the memorials of Charlotte Williams Wynn, we 
find a remark on this circumstance which throws a 
strong side-light on the public recognition of Mr. 



52 MR. GLADSTONE. 

Gladstone's character at this epoch. Writing to 
Baron Yarnhagen von Ense, under date "London 
18th November, 1841," Miss WiUiams Wynn reports: 
" They say Mr. Gladstone has been given two offices 
in order, if possible, to keep him quiet, and by giving 
him too much to do, to prevent him from troubling 
his head about the Church. But I know it will be in 
vain, for, to a speculative mind like his, theology is a 
far more inviting and extensive field than any offered 
by the Board of Trade." 

This is a shrewd estimation of character, the full 
accomplishment of which the charming letter-writer 
would have witnessed had she lived five years longer, 
and seen Mr. Gladstone, just freed from the Imperial 
cares of office, gleefully buckle on his armor to do 
battle with the Pope for the vanquishing of the Yati- 
can. In the meantime he found plenty to do in his 
dual office. 

The Session of 1842 was the one which saw Sir 
Eobert Peel bring in his new sliding scale of Corn 
Duties — a slide which swiftly led to the total abolition 
of the impost. Closely connected with the compre- 
hensive Free Trade policy into which the Premier was 
drifting was the Revision of the Tariff, a herculean 
task, peculiarly adapted to the genius of Mr. Glad- 
stone. This was his opportunity for bringing into 
play that statesmanlike view of a wide field, combined 
with that consummate mastery of details, which sub- 
sequently marked his budgets. His speeches had 
already established for him the position of a debater, 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 53 

and even of an orator. His Tariffs Bill and his con- 
duct in Committee stamped him as a statesman. 

In the following year (1843) he became head of 
his department, and as President of the Board of 
Trade carried an important Bill, controlling the then 
young domestic institution of railways. Since the 
year 1843 Mr. Gladstone has done so much for the 
people that his comparatively minor achievements are 
lost sight of. It is nevertheless interesting to recall 
the fact that he was the author of the Parliamentary 
train which travels the full length of all lines twice a 
day at a fare of one penny a mile — perhaps a more 
useful work than his essay on " The State in its Rela- 
tions with the Church," or even his pamphlet on 
" Vaticanism." 

In 1845 the Government, having determined to 
bring in a Bill dealing with Maynooth College in 
a way that did not satisfy Mr. Gladstone's sound 
Church principles, he resigned, checking for a moment 
his brilliant advance. But he was not a man whom 
Sir Robert Peel could long spare from his side. Early 
next year he returned to the Ministry as Secretary of 
State for the Colonies, and what was even more im- 
portant, pledged to go the full length of Sir Robert 
Peel's Free Trade policy, which now reached the point 
of the abolition of the Corn Laws. This progress, 
carrying him far beyond the halting steps of the 
Duke of Newcastle, necessitated resignation of his 
seat for Newark. Thereafter, for the whole of this 
important Session, and during the greater part of 



54 MR. GLADSTONE, 

the next, he remained without a seat. When he re- 
turned as member for Oxford the Corn Law Kepeal 
Act was passed ; Sir Robert Peel, having done his 
work, was relegated to the Opposition benches, and 
the Whigs had a lease of power. 

In 1850 Sir Robert Peel died, and it seemed to 
some of those who had lived and worked with this 
supreme man that any subsequent attempts to form 
a good Government for England would be hopeless. 
The turbulent individuality of some of his lieutenants 
might, for a time, be merged in his stronger will and 
more transcendent power. But he gone, who was to 
lead men like Mr. Gladstone, Sir James Graham, and 
Sidney Herbert ? They would belong to neither party, 
and standing aloof, their ability acknowledged, and 
their motives above suspicion, they probably exer- 
cised more influence on the House of Commons than 
either group on the two front benches. In the win- 
ter of this year Mr. Gladstone, going to Naples for 
a holiday, saw something of the condition of prison 
life under that enlightened monarch, Ferdinand II. 
Throwing himself with his accustomed energy into 
this cause, he, through the medium of letters addressed 
to Lord Aberdeen, then Premier, succeeded in arous- 
ing not only in England, but throughout Europe, a 
storm of indignation against what the then editor of 
the faithful Univers called " le plus digne et le 
meilleur des Rois." The immediate result of this 
chivalrous advocacy was not commensurate with the 
storm it aroused. But it bore fruit when Garibaldi 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. bo 

and a free people marched into Naples, and King 
Bomba, his priests, his women, and his Court ran out. 

If Mr. Gladstone had died before 1853 he would 
have been accounted a brilliant politician cut off 
before the ripeness of years had brought him fulness 
of opportunity. He had done great things, but theii- 
character was rather critical than constructive. Ho 
had spoken brilliantly, but had not achieved anything 
likely to secure him permanent fame. In 1853 the 
square peg was happily thrust into the square hole, 
and Mr. Gladstone became Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer. His remarkable ability for dealing with 
figures, for evolving a comprehensive scheme out of a 
multiplicity of details, had been shown in the Tariffs 
Bill already alluded to. In 1852 he had disclosed 
in stronger light his mastery over the science of 
National Finance. 

At this epoch Lord Derby was Premier and Mr, 
Disraeli Chancellor of the Exchequer. The latter 
had introduced his first budget in an elaborate 
speech, extending over five hours and a quarter. 
Unless it greatly differed from all his orations of 
similar proportions it must have been intolerably 
heavy. To one listener, however, it possessed a keen 
and enthralling interest. Mr. Gladstone had not, up 
to this period, entered upon that attitude of personal, 
sometimes acrid, antagonism with Mr. Disraeli which 
subsequent events and relative positions created. He 
had answered and been answered by him in the course 
of debate. But the House and the country had not as 



56 MR. GLADSTONE. 

yet come to look with keen interest for what might 
follow upon a conflict between these two men, who 
had no possession in common except genius. Circum- 
stances were rapidly tending toward the creation of 
the condition of affairs the House of Commons and 
the country were long familiar with. Mr. Gladstone 
could never forgive Mr. Disraeli's bitter attacks on 
his old friend and master, Sir Robert Peel, and had 
loudly cheered Sidney Herbert when, in a moment of 
passionate indignation, that gentleman had pointed to 
the Treasury Bench, where now prosperously sat the 
detractor of the great Free-Trader, and asked the 
House to behold in him " a spectacle of humiliation." 

When Mr. Disraeli essaved to deal with finance, 
Mr. Gladstone with fierce delight sprang upon him, 
gripping him so sorely that he made an end of 
him, his budget, and the Ministry of which he was 
the prop. Lord Derby resigned, and Lord Aberdeen, 
being called upon to form a Ministry, invited Mr. 
Gladstone to take the ofi&ce out of which he had driven 
Mr. Disraeli. His acceptance of the offer did not of 
course finally mark his passage across the great gulf 
which separates Toryism from Liberalism. Lord 
Aberdeen was at this epoch far removed from what 
we in these days should call a Liberal. Still, he was 
certainly not a Tory — was, indeed, at the other end 
of the stick, inasmuch as the Tories being out, he was 
called upon to succeed them, and had for colleague 
Lord John Russell. 

Mr. Gladstone's conversion to Liberalism had been 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 57 

slow but certain. "While yet a member of the 
avowedly Conservative Government of Sir Robert 
Peel, he was gradually seeing light. When the shep- 
herd died, and the fold was broken up, he declined 
overtures made to him by Lord Derby to join the 
Ministry formed in 1852, nominally as successor to 
the heritage of Sir Robert Peel. He long stood aloof 
from both parties. Probably the fact that Mr. Dis- 
raeli had come to be accepted as a high priest to 
Toryism added the last impulse to his conviction that 
Toryism was a thing not to be desired or encouraged. 
Accordingly, he formally ranged himself in the 
Liberal ranks. 

On the 18th of April, 1853, he delivered the 
first of what has proved to be a long series of 
budget speeches unsurpassed in Parliamentary his- 
tory. There are some members in the present House 
of Commons who have a vivid recollection of the occa- 
sion. Expectation stood on tiptoe. The House was 
crowded in every part, and it remained crowded and 
tireless, while for the space of five hours Mr. Glad- 
stone poured forth a flood of oratory which made 
arithmetic astonishingly easy, and gave an unaccus- 
tomed grace to statistics. Merely as an oratorical 
display, the speech was a rare treat to the crowded 
assembly that heard it, and to the innumerable com- 
pany which some hours later read it. But the form 
was rendered doubly enchanting by the substance. 
It was clear that Mr. Gladstone could not only adorn 
the exposition of finance with the glamour of oratory, 



58 MR. GLADSTONE., 

but could control the developments of finance with 
a master-hand. 

His scheme was a bold one. The young and un- 
tried Chancellor of the Exchequer found himself with 
a surplus of something over three-quarters of a million. 
This was not much. But it was enough to make 
things pleasant in one or two influential quarters, and 
he might have hoped for a fuller purse next year. To 
have taken this course, to have dribbled away the 
surplus, practically to have left matters where they 
stood, would, moreover, have saved him an infinitude 
of trouble, and relieved him from a tremendous risk. 
Scorning these considerations, plunging into the 
troubled sea with the confident daring of genius, he 
positively increased taxation, chiefly by manipulation 
of the Income Tax, and was thereby enabled, in a 
wholesale manner that seems scarcely less than 
magical, to reduce or absolutely abolish the duties 
on nearly three hundred articles of commerce in 
daily use. The secret of the financier's necromancy 
lay in that sound principle which he may be said to 
have inaugurated in British finance, and under the 
extended application of which trade and commerce 
have advanced by leaps and bounds. He reckoned 
upon that property in national finance known as the 
" elasticity of revenue," now habitually, as a mat- 
ter of ordinary calculation, counted upon to make 
good deficiencies immediately accruing upon reduc- 
tion of taxation. There is nothing remarkable in the 
adoption of this principle to-day, any more than there 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 59 

is in the application of a lighted match to a gas- 
burner when we want light in a darkened room. But 
in 1853 the experiment was as novel, and its results 
as surprising, as would have been the introduction of 
a blazing gas-chandelier in the House of Commons 
when William Pitt was explaining his budget of 1783. 

Perhaps the most remarkable thing in connection 
with Mr. Gladstone's first budget was the confidence 
with which its predictions were accepted. Every- 
where it was applauded, and though Mr. Disraeli, 
as Leader of the Opposition, supported an amend- 
ment against it, his action was regarded merely as a 
matter of course. Equally a matter of course the 
budget resolutions were approved, and the beneficial 
reign of sound finance, inspired by rare genius 
and directed by superlative energy, forthwith com- 
menced. 

Mr. Gladstone continued to be the main strength 
of the Aberdeen Ministry, and in his capacity as 
Chancellor of the Exchequer he financed the Crimean 
War. In 1855, when the coalition fell to pieces, 
and Lord Palmerston undertook to construct a Gov- 
ernment out of the fragments, Mr. Gladstone con- 
tinued to hold his office — promptly resigning it 
when he found the patriotic Mr. Eoebuck's motion, 
for what was known as "The Sebastopol Committee," 
was not to be withstood by the Cabinet. He re- 
mained out of office for some years following, his 
leisure intermitted by work that would have sufficed 
other men for a life's labor. It was during this 



60 MR. GLADSTONE. 

period he completed and published his " Studies on 
Homer and the Homeric Age." He fulfilled more 
than the average duties of a Member of Parliament, 
superadding a special mission to the Ionian Islands, 
undertaken in 1858 at the request of Lord Derby, 
then Premier. Early in 1859 the brief administra- 
tion of Lord Derby, in which Mr. Disraeli had for 
the second time held the office of Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, came to an end. Mr. Gladstone again 
joined the Ministry formed by Lord Palmerston, 
which lasted as long as that Premier's life. 

During the long reign of Lord Palmerston the 
progress of politics attuned itself to the beat of the 
pulse of the aged Premier. There were wars abroad, 
but peace and prosperity at home, and Mr. Glad- 
stone was able to carry out the scheme of bold, far- 
seeing finance the Crimean War had interrupted five 
years earlier. The year 1860 saw the completion of 
the Commercial Treaty with France; a fruitful tree, 
which Mr. Cobden and Napoleon HI. planted, and 
which Mr. Gladstone watered. This same year was 
the last of the Paper Duty, the abolition of which 
in 1861 was a final stroke in that labor for the 
freedom of the press and the extension of intelli- 
gence, begun when, in an earlier budget, he had 
made an end of the Stamp Duty. 



CHAPTER V. 

" UNMUZZLED. " 

The long Parliament of Lord Palmerston came to an 
end on the 6th of July, 1865. There was no partic- 
ular reason why it should have been prorogued then, 
rather than a month or six months later, for it had 
completed only 122 days of its seventh year. But 
at that time Ministers took a view of the possible 
length of Parliaments which finds an interesting 
illustration in an incidental reference made by Mr. 
Gladstone in his budget speech of 1865. Reciting 
the several claims the existing Parliament had upon 
the attention of history, he added, "lastly, it has 
enjoyed the distinction that, although no Parliament 
ever completes the full term of its legal existence, 
yet this is the seventh time you have been called 
upon to make provision for the financial exigencies 
of the country." 

The result of the general election was most impor- 
tant to Mr. Gladstone, and to the nation in whose 
life he had become an important factor. Offering 
himself for re-election at Oxford, he was rejected 
in favor of Mr. Gathorne Hardy, afterwards Lord 
Cranbrook, and some time Secretary of State for 
India. This event created a profound sensation, no 
authority being more deeply moved than The Times. 



62 MR. GLADSTONE. 

It is interesting at this time of day to quote The 
Times of 1865 upon Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Gathorne 
Hardy: "The enemies of the University," it was 
written in this impartial and important journal, 
" will make the most of her disgrace. It has hither- 
to been supposed that a learned constituency was to 
some extent exempt from the vulgar motives of party 
spirit, and capable of forming a higher estimate of 
statesmanship than common tradesmen or tenant- 
farmers. It will now stand on record that they have 
deliberately sacrificed a representative who combined 
the very highest qualifications, moral and intellec- 
tual, for an academical seat, to party-spirit, and 
party-spirit alone. , . . Henceforth Mr. Gladstone 
will belong to the country, but no longer to the 
University. " 

Great Britain, in one geographical section or other, 
has always taken care that it shall not be deprived of 
the advantage of Mr. Gladstone's presence in its Par- 
liament. On this occasion it was South Lancashire 
which, perceiving his peril at Oxford, voluntarily 
offered to secure him a seat. From the University 
he hastened to the manufacturing town, and stood 
before the men of Manchester, as he said, "unmuz- 
zled." Even the dullest politicians recognized the 
significance of the events so aptly described in this 
memorable phrase. As long as Mr. Gladstone was 
politically associated with Oxford, the Alma Mater 
he loved with changeless affection, there was a possi- 
bility that he might successfully resist the silent 



" unmuzzled:' 63 

forces leading him to a more "uncompromising Liber- 
alism. When Oxford snapped the chain he was free 
to go whither he listed. The end would, doubtless, 
inevitably have arrived. He would have retired 
from Oxford because he was bent upon freeing the 
Irish Church, just as in an earlier stage of his career 
he had withdrawn from Newark because he was about 
to join in an assault on Protection. Sooner or later 
the unmuzzling must have been accomplished. Ox- 
ford elected to make it sooner by several years. 

The unmuzzling process was completed by an event 
which made memorable the autumn of 1865. Lord 
Palmerston died, and the pent-up flood of Liberal 
life rushed downward like a cataract. In a happy 
phrase Dean Church described Palmerston in his 
closing years as " the great-grandpapa to the English 
political world, whose age was to be respected." 
Grandpapa's eyes reverentially closed, the time for 
coalitions and temporizing was past. Earl Russell 
succeeded as Premier, and Mr. Gladstone was named 
Leader of the House of Commons, still holding the 
Ministerial office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

It was felt that the hour had come for the intro- 
duction of a Reform Bill, and in Earl Russell the 
man was naturally found. The statesman who had 
taken a leading part in the Reform campaign of 1832 
was largely responsible for the measure of 1866. 
But it happened that to Mr. Gladstone, as Leader of 
the House of Commons, fell the task of introducing 
the Bill, and bearing the brunt of the battle that 



64 MR. GLADSTONE. 

raged around it. There were giants in those days, 
and the Parliamentary debates of the Session of 
1866 stand out in the pages of Hansard, by reason of 
their brilliancy and fire. Mr. Disraeli led the united 
body of the Conservatives in an attack upon a 
Bill which they regarded with holy horror, as a 
long advance on the way to the establishment of 
democracy. 

But the most dangerous foes of the Liberal party 
were to be found within its own household. This 
was the year in which Mr. Lowe, fresh from the 
insufficient glories of a Colonial Legislature, made 
his mark in the House of Commons. The terror of 
the uttermost Tory was far exceeded by the appre- 
hension with which he regarded this Bill. Speaking 
of Mr. Gladstone, and contemplating the probability 
of the Bill being carried, he exclaimed : " I court 
not a single leaf of the laurels that may encircle his 
brow. I do not envy him his triumph. His be 
the glory of carrying the Bill, mine of having to the 
utmost of my poor ability resisted it." 

It was in this year that the Cave of Adullam was 
formed, and there was created that immortal " party 
of two [Mr. Horsman and Mr. Lowe], like the Scotch 
terrier that was so covered with hair you could not 
tell which was the head and which the tail." The 
debate on the second reading of the Bill lasted several 
days. On the eve of the division it fell to Mr. Glad- 
stone's lot to wind up the debate, which he did in a 
speech containing perhaps absolutely the finest per- 



« unmuzzled:' 65 

oration of the many that sparkle in the train of the 
infinitude of his orations. 

"You cannot fight against the future," he said, 
turning sharp upon the Opposition, and speaking in 
a voice where pathos struggled with exultation for 
the mastery. "Time is on our side. The great 
social forces which move onward in their might and 
majesty, and which the tumult of our debates does 
not for a moment impede or disturb — those great 
social forces are against you. They are marshalled 
on our side ; and the banner which we now carry in 
this fight, though perhaps at some moment it may 
droop over our sinking heads, yet it soon again will 
float in the eye of Heaven, and will be borne by the 
firm hands of the united people of the three king- 
doms, perhaps not to an easy, but to a certain and a 
not far distant victory." 

In the mean time the defeat too surely foreseen was 
accomplished. The Adullamites coalescing with the 
Conservatives made it impossible to pass the meas- 
ure, which was finally thrown out. The Ministry 
resigned, and the Earl of Derby, most unhappy of 
Cabinet constructors, was again called upon to form 
a Ministry from a party in a hopeless minority. 

In the race for the highest office of the State, Mr. 
Disraeli beat Mr. Gladstone by one lap, as he had 
outrun him by the same distance when the Chancel- 
lorship of the Exchequer was the goal. The Earl of 
Derby held office just long enough to see passed, by 
the Ministry of which he was the head, a Reform 

5 



66 ■ MR. GLADSTONE. 

Bill exceeding in its democratic tendencies any that 
had been proposed by a responsible Liberal Minis- 
try. As soon as Parliament met the following year, 
Lord Derby retired on the plea of ill-health, and Mr. 
Disraeli, who had the previous Session heard him- 
self denounced by his later colleague. Lord Salisbury, 
as "a political adventurer," and his policy described 
as "one of legerdemain," became leader of the Con- 
servative party and Prime Minister of England. 

In this Session Mr. Gladstone's mind reached the 
final point of conviction that the Irish Church might 
no longer be endured. Early in the Session he laid 
upon the table of the House a series of resolutions. 
The first roundly declared that, " in the opinion of the 
House of Commons, it is necessary that the Estab- 
lished Church of Ireland should cease to exist as an 
Establishment." On this question Liberals and 
Conservatives joined issue, the Liberals being united 
in a degree unusual then, not often repeated since. 
Successive divisions showed that the majority were 
overwhelmingly in favor of the disestablishment 
of the Church. On the question of Parliamentary 
Reform, Mr. Disraeli's position was not unfairly 
described by Mr. Lowe. "If," said Mr. Lowe, 
affecting to paraphrase the terms of the Conserva- 
tive leader's reiterated speech, " the House will deign 
to take us into its counsel, if it will co-operate with 
us in this matter, we shall receive with cordiality, 
with deference, nay, even with gratitude, any sug- 
gestion it likes to offer. Say what you like to us. 



" unmuzzled:' 67 

only for God's sake leave us in our places." Mr. 
Disraeli had, as he himself boasted, educated his 
party in the matter of Parliamentary Reform. But 
in view of such a question as the disestablishment 
of the Church, parleying was impossible. He must 
fight ; and finding fighting impossible with the Par- 
liament assembled, he brought about its dissolution, 
and appealed to the country. 

The answer was sharp and unmistakable. By 
tremendous exertions, concentrated with all the 
power of personal dislike and party hatred, Mr. 
Gladstone was defeated in Lancashire. Elsewhere 
the Liberals had an overwhelming triumph, and Mr. 
Gladstone (returned from Greenwich, which had 
done for him in this election the service performed 
by South Lancashire in 1865) found himself at the 
head of an overwhelming majority — a Prime Min- 
ister personally more powerful than any who had 
held the reins of State since the palmiest days of Sir 
Robert Peel. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PKEMIER. 

Invested with supreme power, with the immediate 
mission of disestablishing the Irish Church, he set 
himself about the task with characteristic energy. 
At the earliest date he submitted to the new Parlia- 
ment his Bill for the Disestablishment of the Church. 
The second reading was carried by a majority of 
118, in a House, including tellers, of 622 members, 
a striking event that disposed of anything like legiti- 
mate opposition. Opposition there was, neverthe- 
less, and it was three months before the Bill passed 
through Committee, during which time, statesmen 
of the calibre of Mr. Cavendish Bentinck, Mr. James 
Lowther, and Mr. " Tom " Collins rose innumerable 
times to state their opinion that the end of all things 
was at hand, and to hint, as plainly as might be 
within Parliamentary limits, their personal opinion 
of the author of so much evil. 

The next Session (1870) was primarily devoted to 
the Irish Land Bill, this year added to the statute- 
book ; in addition, the Elementary Education Act 
was passed, — hardy fruits of a Session disturbed 
and interrupted by interpellations and debates on 
the policy of the Government with respect to the war 
between France and Prussia. The next year saw 



PREMIER. ^^ 



passed the Army Regulation Bill, embodying the 
Abolition of Purchase, which latter Mr. Gladstone 
finally accomplished, in opposition to the House of 
Lords, by invoking the Royal Warrant. The Ballot 
Bill also brought in this Session, was thrown out 
by the Lords. In the following year it was brought 
in again, and, being put in the forefront of the pro- 
gramme, was carried. A less happy fate befell the 
Irish University Bill, which brought about a new 
Cave of Adullam, and was thrown out by a coali- 
tion between the extreme Liberals and the watchful 
Conservatives. A majority of three in a House 
of 5T3 declared against the Government, where- 
upon Mr. Gladstone resigned. The Queen sent 
for Mr. Disraeli, and invited him to form a Minis- 
try. But the Leader of the Opposition, with a pre- 
science loudly murmured against at the time by his 
impatient followers, declined to hurry events. Mr. 
Gladstone returned to office, and the Session pursued 

■i-j-a pr)llT"Se 

But the end was not far off. Mr. Gladstone had 
lived fast and travelled far. He had accomplished 
in four Sessions an amount of work formerly esti- 
mated as the full allowance of four Parliaments. 
He had done all, and more than all he had promised, 
far more than might reasonably have been antici- 
pated on entering office. The usual symptoms that 
follow on repletion began to manifest themselves. 
The House of Commons was restless, discontented 
and ill-humored, while the country, waxing fat, 



70 MR. GLADSTONE. 

began to kick. The Premier was not constitution- 
ally the kind of man for meeting and overcoming 
such a crisis. He had always been at a disadvan- 
tage as compared with his great rival in respect of 
personal manner. He was too much in earnest to 
pay a just measure of attention to those little cour- 
tesies which count for much even in the government 
of an empire on which the sun never sets. It would 
be an exaggeration to say that Lord Beaconsfield 
was never in earnest. It is unquestionable that he 
was never so much exhausted by earnestness that he 
forgot to pay those petty homages which cost so 
little, and to the leader of a party are worth so 
much. 

Mr. Gladstone's gaze was fixed far above heads of 
mortal men, and the natural consequence was that 
when he moved about his daily work he frequently 
knocked up against his own friends and trod upon 
their corns. The average of personal popularity 
was not made up by any of his colleagues. Some, 
notably Mr. Lowe and Mr. Ayrton, were viewed with 
strong personal dislike by the public, whom they in 
their turn unmercifully snubbed. Mr. Gladstone, 
his colleagues, and his policy began to be assailed 
from all sides. Foreign policy, being necessarily 
less susceptible of full comprehension than any 
other ramification of Constitutional Government, has 
always been peculiarly attractive to the more igno- 
rant among us. It is a large question, upon which 
small intelligences like to swell and puny persons 



PREMIER. 71 

love to strut. Mr. Gladstone's foreign policy was 
assailed with persistent clamor. But the most dan- 
gerous symptom of approaching decay was found in 
the vitality of sections ranged under the common 
banner of Liberalism. 

This spirit began to manifest itself for the first 
time in the Committee on the Education Bill, when 
the Nonconformist body spied under Mr. Forster's 
muffler the beard of a Denominationalist. In mak- 
ing a last protest on the third reading of the Bill^ 
Mr. Miall affirmed that the Nonconformists "could 
not stand this sort of thing much longer." 

Mr. Gladstone was sitting quietly, even listlessly, 
on the Treasury Bench, when this threatening speech 
was made. He had not intended to join in the de- 
bate, the matter having been already talked out over 
many sittings. Moreover, the Bill was not in his 
charge, but Mr. Forster's. When these words fell 
on his ear, he quickly rose from his recumbent posi- 
tion, and those looking on knew that a scene was 
imminent. 

As Mr. Miall resumed his seat, the Premier sprang 
to his feet, the thunder rolled and the lightning 
flashed. "I hope," he said, in those slow, carefully- 
accentuated tones which marked the rarely-reached 
white heat of his passion, " my honorable friend will 
not continue his support of the Government one 
moment longer than he deems it consistent with his 
sense of duty and right. For God's sake, sir, let 
him withdraw it the moment he thinks it better for 



72 MR. GLADSTONE. 

the cause he has at heart that he should do so. So 
long as my honorable friend thinks fit to give us his 
support we will co-operate with my honorable friend 
for every purpose we have in common. But when 
we think his opinions and demands exacting, when 
we think he looks too much to the section of the 
community he adorns, and too little to the interests 
of the people at large, we must then recollect that 
we are the Government of the Queen, and that those 
who have assumed the high responsibility of admin- 
istering the affairs of this Empire must endeavor to 
forget the parts in the whole, and must, in the great 
measures they introduce into the House, propose to 
themselves no meaner or narrower object than the 
welfare of the Empire at large." 

In the Session of 1872 the growing lassitude of 
Parliament was shown on the second reading of the 
Ballot Bill — a measure of the first importance, for 
the division on the second reading of which the 
united strenuous exertions of the Whips could muster 
an aggregate voting power of only 165. The third 
reading was carried by 276 votes against 218 ; figures 
which show that Mr. Gladstone still had a substan- 
tial majority in the House. By the Licensing Act, 
introduced and passed this Session, the popularity 
of the Government received a fresh blow. It was 
reserved for the Irish University Bill to complete 
the destruction. The majority against the second 
reading of this Bill was very small, and was made 
up of sections not likely to reunite under any pro- 



PREMIER. 73 

bable circumstances. Mr. Gladstone, as has been 
shown, resumed office when Mr. Disraeli declined to 
have his hand forced. But he never really recovered 
from the blow thus struck. 

The Session flickered to an end amidst constant 
wrangles and an aggravating disregard for authority. 
In vain Mr. Ayrton had been cast overboard. In 
vain Mr. Lowe repeated in his own person the use- 
ful purposes of Jonah. The Ministerial ship would 
not right, lying in the trough of the sea, an object 
of derision to the fickle public who five years 
earlier had helped to launch it amidst demonstra- 
tions of the wildest enthusiasm. Buffeted abroad, 
assailed from within, angry, dispirited with existing 
circumstances, hopeful of the verdict of a nation 
whose behests he had splendidly fulfilled, Mr. Glad- 
stone suddenly cut the Gordian knot. On the 24th 
of January, 1874, just on the eve of the assembling 
of Parliament for the customary Session, the country 
awoke to find Parliament was dissolved. It was 
through the medium of an address to the electors of 
Greenwich that the startling news was communi- 
cated. There was considerable vigor in the lengthy 
document, and Mr. Gladstone, who a few months 
earlier, upon the resignation of Mr. Lowe, had 
returned to his old office of Chancellor of the Exche- 
quer, promised a renewed exhibition of the magic 
with which the country was once familiar, now to be 
directed to the extinction of the Income Tax. But 
between the lines it was not difficult to read that the 



74 MR. GLADSTONE. 

great statesman was weary and sick at heart. "If," 
he said, "the trust of this Administration be by the 
effect of the present elections virtually renewed, I 
for one will serve you, for what remains of my time, 
faithfully. If the confidence of the country be taken 
from us, and handed over to others whom you may 
deem more worthy, I for one shall accept cheerfully 
my dismissal." 

There was no presage of victory in such a call to 
battle. But in his gloomiest moments Mr. Glad- 
stone could not have anticipated the full depth of the 
reverse of fortune awaiting him at the poll. He 
himself narrowly escaped defeat at Greenwich, com- 
ing in second, the head of the poll being reserved for 
an estimable but obscure Conservative. Elsewhere, 
all along the line, the Liberals were defeated. 
Broken was the phalanx, which within seven years, 
dating from 1867 — two years in opposition and five 
in office — had achieved a record of work rarely 
equalled, never beaten. They had abolished the 
compulsory Church rate. They had transformed a 
nominal Reform Bill into a real measure. They 
had abolished the Irish Church, reformed the Irish 
Land Laws, settled the question of Scotch Educa- 
tion, and far advanced the cause of education in 
England. Purchase in the army had been abolished, 
and the pathway of promotion thrown open to the 
foot of merit. The Ballot Bill had been carried; 
the judicature of the country reformed; religious 
tests finally abolished in the universities ; the esti- 



PREMIER. 75 

mates reduced, whilst the defensive forces of the 
country, both military and naval, had been appre- 
ciably increased. 

This vras a claim upon the gratitude of an electorate 
which seemed likely to meet with abundant reward. 
But Mr. Gladstone had lived long enough to learn 
the bitter lesson that gratitude is unknown in poli- 
tics. When the gains and losses were counted up, 
it was found that Mr. Disraeli, meeting Parliament 
in 1874, was almost exactly in the same position as 
Mr. Gladstone had been when meeting Parliament 
in 1869. The pendulum, having swung violently to 
one side, had in return nearly reached the same 
altitude on the other. 



CHAPTER YIL 

THROWING UP THE SPONGE. 

The new Parliament opened on the 5th of March, 
1874, with Mr. Disraeli in the seat where through 
six eventful years he had watched Mr. Gladstone 
throned. For the first time in his political history 
he was not only in office, but in power. In the Ses- 
sion of 1873, Mr. Gladstone being defeated on the 
Irish Education Bill by the action of the Noncon- 
formist conscience, Mr. Disraeli had, to the mani 
fest chagrin of some of his supporters, declined to 
take office. His prescience was magnificently justi- 
fied by the swiftly succeeding event of the general 
election. Four years earlier, in a private letter 
which nearly a quarter of a century later saw the 
light of day, Mr. Froude wrote : " I have been among 
some of the Tory magnates lately. They distrust 
Disraeli still, and will never again be led by him. 
So they are as sheep that have no shepherd. Lord 
Salisbury's time may come ; but not yet. " 

That was, as many still living know, and as a 
multitude of written testimony proves, the attitude 
towards Disraeli of the party he had at length, with 
infinite patience and consummate skill, led out of 
the wilderness. When, in 1852, Disraeli, made 
Chancellor of the Exchequer by the audacious Lord 



THROWING UP THE SPONGE. 77 

Derby, gave his first Parliamentary dinner, The 
Saturday Review, then the organ of blue-blooded 
Toryism, celebrated the event in much appreciated 
verse, of which one stanza lingers in the memory : 

And o'er them all in jewels dight, 
Not known from real in any light, 
And St. John's clothes as good as new, 
Enraptured sat the glorious Jew. 

For Disraeli the plucky fight against jealousy and 
detraction was over. Long a pariah among the aris- 
tocratic party, he was now to become its idol, soon 
amid universal acclaim to take his seat among them 
as Earl of Beaconsfield. The dramatic interest of 
the episode was completed by the fact that, coinci- 
dentally with his supreme elevation, came about the 
ruinous fall of his great adversary. 

There was much curiosity as to what part Mr. 
Gladstone would be disposed to play in the trans- 
formed scene on the parliamentary boards. It is 
possible that, even at this early date, some of his 
friends had been made aware of his intention of 
withdrawing from the conflict. It was a habit of his 
mind, whenever he met with rebuff in the political 
arena, to contemplate retirement. In Committee on 
the Reform Bill of 1867, he, then ihe Leader of the 
Liberal party in the House of Commons, brought 
forward a series of amendments which, had the 
whole of the party voted with him, would have been 
engrafted in the Bill. But there was then, as there 
has been since, a cave. As Mr. Bright put it in a 



78 MR. GLADSTONE. 

speech delivered a few days later, " very small men 
who during their whole political lives have not 
advanced the question of Reform by one hair-s 
breadth or by one moment in time, can at a critical 
hour throw themselves athwart the objects of a great 
party, and mar a great measure that ought to affect 
the interests of the country beneficially for a long 
time. " 

Mr. Gladstone's amendments were negatived by a 
majority of twenty-one in a House of 599 members. 
He thereupon, in reply to a convenient letter from 
Mr. Crawford, one of the members for the City, 
threw up the whole business, declining to proceed 
with blocks of other amendments of which he had 
given notice. Earlier even than this he had begun 
to talk in the " at-my-time-of-life " mood that became 
so familiar throughout the closing quarter-of-a-cen- 
tury of his public life. In 1861 he wrote : " Events 
are not wholly unwelcome which remind me that my 
own public life is now in its thirtieth year, and 
ought not to last very many years longer. " In the 
troublesome times of 1873, when friends were falling 
off and faction rearing its head with fuller rigor, 
Mr. Gladstone was accustomed constantly to refer to 
retirement. In his diary. Bishop Wilberforce writes 
under date May 6th, 1873 : " Gladstone much talk- 
ing; how little real good work any Premier has 
done after sixty. Peel ; Palmerston, his work all 
really done before ; the Duke of Wellington added 
nothing to his reputation after. I told him Dr. 



THROWING UP THE SPONGE. 79 

Clark tliouglit it would be physically worse for him 
to retire. ' Dr. Clark does not know how completely 
I should employ myself,' he replied," probably with 
Homer and the Vatican in his eye. 

Whatever intention Mr. Gladstone may have 
formed when he found his forces crumbling to pieces 
at the general election, he did not at the outset shirk 
his Parliamentary duties. With the opening of a 
new Parliament there was necessity for the election 
of a new Speaker, or the re-election of the old one. 
He was still, nominally, Leader of the Liberal 
Party, and upon him devolved in the House of Com- 
mons the duty of supporting the Speaker-elect on 
taking the chair. The House was crowded with an 
unusual number of new members, anxious to see all 
that was to be seen, not least eager to catch a 
glimpse of the great statesman, who, quitting the 
House in the late autumn master of a majority that 
still could muster between sixty and seventy, re- 
turned to it to find himself in a minority of half a 
hundred. Mr. Gladstone so timed his reappearance 
on the scene that any demonstration, friendly or 
hostile, was impossible. Members trooping out to 
the other House to hear the Royal Commission read, 
came back to find him on the Front Opposition 
Bench, not in the place of Leader opposite the brass- 
bound box, but humbly bestowed almost under the 
shadow of the gallery, where Under Secretaries are 
accustomed to sit. It was noted that, contrary to 
his Parliamentary habit, he had brought with him 



80 MR. GLADSTONE. 

his hat, the fleeting character of his visit being 
further studiously indicated by his carrying a stick, 
and wearing gloves. He was loudly cheered from 
the Liberal side when he followed the official pro- 
poser and seconder of the Speaker's re-election. But 
he was not to be stirred beyond the depths of some 
ordinary courtly remarks, delivered midway down the 
table, his hand resting on his stick. 

With all his fervor and his sometimes torrential 
passion Mr. Gladstone is a man whose shortest 
step is ordered with grave deliberation. Those who 
saw portents of coming change in his hat and stick 
and gloves, and the precise position at the table 
from which he addressed the House on the re-elec-^ 
tion of the Speaker, had speedy confirmation of their 
suspicions. On the 12th of March in the first j^ear 
of the new Parliament, he wrote to Lord Granville 
the following momentous letter : — 

"I have issued a circular to Members of Parlia- 
ment of the Liberal party on the occasion of the 
opening of Parliamentary business. But I feel it to 
be necessary that, while discharging this duty, I 
should explain what a circular could not convey with 
regard to my individual position at the present time. 
I need not apologize for addressing these explana- 
tions to you. Independently of other reasons for so 
troubling you, it is enough to observe that you have 
very long represented the Liberal party, and have 
also acted on behalf of the late Government, from 
its commencement to its close, in the House of Lords. 



THROWING UP THE SPONGE. 81 

"For a variety of reasons personal to myself, I 
could not contemplate any unlimited extension of 
active political service; and I am anxious that it 
should be clearly understood by those friends with 
whom I have acted in the direction of affairs, that 
at my age I must reserve my entire freedom to divest 
myself of all the responsibilities of leadership at no 
distant time. The need of rest will prevent me 
from giving more than occasional attendance m the 
House of Commons during the present Session. 

"I should be desirous, shortly before the com- 
mencement of the Session of 1875, to consider 
whether there would be advantage in my placing my 
services for a time at the disposal of the Liberal 
party, or whether I should then claim exemption 
from the duties I have hitherto discharged. If, how- 
ever, there should be reasonable ground for believing 
that, instead of the course which I have sketched, it 
would be preferable, in the view of the party gen- 
erally for me to assume at once the place of an 
independent member, I should willingly adopt the 
latter alternative. But I shall retain all the desire 
1 have hitherto felt for the welfare of the party, and 
if the gentlemen composing it should think fit either 
to choose a leader or make provision ad interim, 
with a view to the convenience of the present year, 
the person designated would, of course, command 
from me any assistance which he might find occasion 
to seek, and which it might be in my power to 

render. " 

6 



82 MR. GLADSTONE. 

In spite of this indication of desire and intention 
to withdraw, Mr. Gladstone still occasionally revis- 
ited the House of Commons. * He could not resist the 
temptation of criticizing the first Budget of the new 
Ministry, brought in by Sir Stafford Northcote, built 
up on the splendid surplus left by him as a legacy to 
his successors. He replied with something of his 
ancient fire to a violently rude attack made upon 
him by Mr. SmoUet, who accused him of having 
"organized a Dissolution in secret, and having by 
unworthy, improper, and unconstitutional methods, 
tried to seize power." 

His most notable reappearance in the new Parlia- 
ment was in connection with the debate on the 
Public Worship Regulation Bill. This measure had 
been brought into the Lords and passed through the 
House under the direction of Archbishop Tait. Mr. 
Disraeli disclosing a curiously strong interest in 
it, it suddenly loomed large upon the Parliamentary 
arena. The Archbishop had defined its purpose as 
an effort to put down Ritualism. Mr. Disraeli, in 
one of his well-considered phrases that immediately 
caught on, defined it as an attack on " mass in mas- 
querade. " Mr. Gladstone unexpectedly turned up 
in hot opposition to the measure, which he attempted 
to smother under six resolutions. 

Interest in the Bill, intense as it had grown, was 
for a while obscured by a personal conflict between 
Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Gladstone. One of 
the last desperate attempts made to keep the late 



THROWING UP THE SPONGE. 83 

Ministry on its legs had been the recruitment of two 
gentlemen, known at the time as Mr. Henry James 
and Mr. Yernon Harcourt. Seated together on the 
front bench below the gangway, these two had more 
effectively worried their nominal chief than had the 
regular opposition, even though led by Mr. Disraeli. 
Towards the close of the Session of 1873 there had 
been an angry scene, in which Mr. Gladstone, driven 
to bay, had turned upon his honorable friends below 
the gangway and berated them something after the 
fashion in which he had fallen upon the more inof- 
fensive Mr. Miall. The next thing heard in this 
connection was in November following, when Mr. 
Henry James was made Attorney-General, and Mr. 
Yernon Harcourt, becoming Solicitor-General, came 
to be known as Sir William. Neither of the new 
law officers sat on the Treasury Bench, for before 
the new Session was summoned dissolution had 
swooped down on the astonished Commons. Their 
ex-Ministerial position, otherwise, as far as Parlia- 
ment was concerned, a Barmecide feast, entitled 
both to seats on the Front Opposition Bench, a privi- 
lege of which they forthwith availed themselves. 

Sir William Harcourt ranged himself on the side 
of Mr. Disraeli in support of the Public Worship 
Regulation Bill. Thus it came to pass that his first 
prominent appearance under his new style was in 
conflict with the statesman who had conferred the 
honor upon him. Sir William did not mince matters 
or modify phrases. He went straight for Mr. Glad- 



84 MR. GLADSTONE. 

stone, making his attack the more bitter by contrast 
with the eulogistic terms in which he alluded to Mr. 
Disraeli, "a leader who is proud of the House of 
Commons, and of whom the House of Commons is 
proud." Mr. Gladstone, having at this stage already- 
spoken, said nothing in immediate reply. A few 
days later he found opportunity to administer to his 
rebellious colleague a trouncing which the House 
enjoyed with a zest equalled only by the delight with 
which it had seen Sir William Harcourt biting 
at the hand that had fed him with the Solicitor- 
Generalship. 

The episode had significance far beyond the bear- 
ings of the Public Worship Bill, inasmuch as the 
House of Commons saw in it fresh testimony of what 
it regarded as the final collapse of the once powerful 
statesman. Sir William Harcourt, it was argued, was 
an exceedingly shrewd man, with special opportunities 
of knowing Mr. Gladstone's exact position and pros- 
pects. If he thought it safe to turn and rend him, 
hopeless indeed was his case. 

A conclusion which shows how prone to error are 
the wisest amongst us. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

PAMPHLETEER. 

Parliament was summoned to meet for the Session 
of 1875 on the 5th of February. Three weeks earlier 
Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Granville announcing 
his final resolve to retire from the Leadership of the 
Liberal party. " The time has, I think, arrived," he 
wrote, " when I ought to revert to the subject of the 
letter which I addressed to you on March the 12th. 
Before determining whether I should offer to assume 
a charge which might extend over a length of time, I 
have reviewed with all the care in my power, a number 
of considerations both public and private, of which a 
portion, and these not by any means insignificant, 
were not in existence at the date of the letter. The 
result has been that I see no public advantage in my 
continuing to act as the Leader of the Liberal party ; 
and that at the age of sixty-five, and after forty-two 
years of a laborious public life, I think myself entitled 
to retire on the present opportunity. This retirement 
is dictated to me by my personal views as to the best 
method of spending the closing years of my life. I 
need hardly say that my conduct in Parliament will 
continue to be governed by the principles on which 



86 MR. GLADSTONE. 

I have heretofore acted ; and whatever arrangements 
may be made for the treatment of general business, 
and for the advantage or convenience of the Liberal 
party, they will have my cordial support. I should 
perhaps add that I am at present, and mean for a short 
time to be, engaged on a special matter which occupies 
me closely." 

The special matter upon which Mr. Gladstone was 
engaged proved to be a crusade against the Vatican, 
undertaken with the ardor of youth and with a con- 
centrated energy amazing in a man who had retired 
from Parliamentary and political life on the specific 
ground that he was aweary. In the preceding year 
he had followed up his futile opposition to the Regu- 
lation of Public Worship Bill by writing an article in 
one of the monthly magazines, a course that soon grew 
familiar but was at the time regarded as notable in 
an ex-Prime Minister. This was followed by other 
papers dealing with " The Church of England and 
Ritualism." This raised a storm of theological con- 
troversy in which Mr. Gladstone positively revelled. 
Roman Catholics and Ritualists buzzed about his ears 
with angry replies, to which he made rejoinder in 
pamphlets. One bore the inscription, " The Vatican 
Decrees and their Bearing on Civil Allegiance." A 
final rejoinder in another pamphlet was entitled 
" Vaticanism." Both works had a phenomenal sale, 
and the tide of controversy that rose with them seemed 
to bear Mr. Gladstone forever away from the Parlia- 
mentary shore. ^ 



PAMPHLETEER. 87 

On the eve of the Session, members of the Liberal 
party, a disheartened minority in the House of 
Commons, had met at the Reform Club to elect a 
leader. Mr. Gladstone had stepped down from his 
high place, and was so engrossed in his wrangle round 
the Church porch, that he had not time to give a 
thought to public affairs, or a day to the duties of 
the House of Commons. The result of the meeting 
at the Reform Club was that Lord Hartington was 
unanimously elected to fill the thankless post of 
Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. 
He took his seat in front of the brass-bound box, and 
for a while business of the House went on as if Mr. 
Gladstone were dead and buried. Occasionally he 
looked in, bringing with him hat and stick and 
gloves, remaining for half an hour or so at the lower 
end of the front Opposition Bench, where he found a 
companion in Mr. Bright, and stealing silently away. 

One afternoon in March of this year he unex- 
pectedly interposed, delivering a speech which created 
a profound sensation. It was on a Bill introduced by 
Mr. Gathorne Hardy, then Secretary of State for War, 
designed, as Mr. Lowe put it, " to make commissions 
in the army a valuable commodity." Stung by this 
attempt to get behind his own action in abolishing 
purchase, Mr. Gladstone spoke with great animation 
and irresistible force. Members looking from the 
lithe, animated figure standing at the table upon the 
immobile figure seated in the place of Leader instinc- 
tively felt that the whole arrangement was a farce, to 



88 ' MR. GLADSTONE. 

be made an end of whenever Mr. Gladstone felt dis- 
posed to return and claim his own. But the time was 
not yet, and the chief disturbance under Lord Hart- 
ington's rule came from below the gangway on his 
own side, whence Mr. Chamberlain would presently 
jeer at the harassed captain, hailing him as "late 
the Leader of the Liberal party." 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE FIERY CROSS. 

The Eastern Question developed in the summer of 
1875. Mr. Gladstone, speaking three years later at 
Hawarden, declared that he had not opened his mouth 
for one word of criticism on the subject till the 1st of 
July, 1876. " When the Government had, by sending 
the fleet to Besika Bay, encouraged the Turks in their 
obstinate resistance to reform ; and when the Prime 
Minister, by his notorious fencing answers on the sub- 
ject of the Bulgarian atrocities, had shown that no 
reliance could be placed on the Government for the 
purposes of humanity in the East ; and when they, by 
repelling and rejecting the Berlin Memorandum, had 
broken up the concert of Europe and had proposed 
nothing themselves in return— till all these things had 
happened I never said a word in criticism of the pro- 
ceedings of the Government." 

On the 23rd of June, 1876, The Daily News pub- 
lished particulars, furnished by its Constantinople 
correspondent, of what soon came to be known through- 
out the world as the Bulgarian atrocities. Questions 
were put in both Houses of Parliament. Mr. Disraeli, 
replying to an inquiry by Mr. Forster, jauntily af- 
firmed that the story published in The Daily News 



90 MR. GLADSTONE. 

rested on nothing more than " coffee-house babble." 
One detail that had profoundly impressed the public 
mind described the impalement of hapless Bulgarians 
by the Bashi Bazouks. The truth of this Mr. Disraeli 
took leave to doubt, airily adding, " In the East when 
it is proposed to do a man to death, a much more 
expeditious method of business is usually adopted." 
When this conversation was going on in the House of 
Commons Mr. Gladstone was rusticating at Hawarden, 
engaged in preparation of fresh magazine articles. 
But the cry that went up from the sixty villages of 
Bulgaria, their homesteads trampled underfoot, their 
men tortured to death, their women dishonored, 
found response in every fibre of his frame. He 
hurried back to town and commenced a campaign 
which ended in the overthrow of an apparently im- 
pregnable Ministry. 

He occupied the earliest weeks of the Parliamentary 
recess (1876) in writing a pamphlet entitled, " Bul- 
garian Horrors." " Let us," he said, in a passage 
containing a memorable phrase, " insist that our Gov- 
ernment, which has been working in one direction, 
shall work in the other, and shall apply all its vigor 
to concur with the other States of Europe in obtaining 
the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bul- 
garia. Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in 
the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off 
themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their 
Bimbashis, and their Yuzbachis, their Kaimakams and 
their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I 



THE FIERY CROSS. 91 

hope, clear out from the province they have desolated 
and profaned." 

He followed up the hurling of this thunderbolt by 
an address to his constituents mustered on Blackheath. 
Recurring to this epoch many years after, he observed : 
" After the Parliamentary Session of 1876, I thought 
the agitation against the Turks in Bulgaria was all up 
for a time. I knew it would revive, and I thought it 
would revive in the next Session. But I gave it up 
for the moment until I saw in the newspapers, by ac- 
cident, that the working-men of England were going 
to meet in London on the subject. I said to myself 
that moment, ' Then it is alive ! ' Seeing that it was 
alive, I did what I could, and we all did what we could, 
and we stirred the country to such an extent that if 
the Government had dissolved Parliament at that 
moment I do not believe there would have been a 
hundred men returned to support its policy." 

In a fine passage of this Blackheath speech he ad- 
vocated common action between England and Russia, 
who were chiefly responsible in the matter. " Upon 
the concord and hearty co-operation — not upon a mere 
hollow truce between England and Russia, but upon 
their concord and hearty, cordial co-operation — de- 
pends a good settlement of this question. Their power 
is immense. The power of Russia by land for acting 
upon these countries, as against Turkey, is perfectly 
resistless. The power of England by sea is scarcely 
less important at this moment. For I ask you, what 
would be the condition of the Turkish armies if the 



92 MR. GLADSTONE. 

British Admiral, now in Besika Bay, were to inform 
the Government of Constantinople that from that hour, 
until atonement had been made — until punishment 
had descended, until justice had been vindicated — not- 
a man, nor a ship, nor a boat, should cross the waters 
of the Bosphorus, or the cloudy Euxine, or the bright 
JEgean, to carry aid to the Turkish troops ? " 

By this time Mr. Disraeli, now Lord Beaconsfield, 
discovered he had made a mistake in treating with 
jocularity charges promptly substantiated by the 
official report of Mr. Baring. It was felt that Mr. 
Gladstone's Blackheath speech must be replied to. 
So Lord Beaconsfield, going down to Aylesbury, 
described the conduct of the Opposition in this matter 
as "worse than any Bulgarian atrocity." That did 
not mend matters, nor did further heated denunciation 
of " designing politicians who take advantage of sub- 
lime sentiments and apply them for the furtherance 
of their sinister ends." 

There was no one found to palliate the action of the 
Turks in Bulgaria, but there were many who, evading 
the issue, bitterly attacked Mr. Gladstone. He was 
not even safe from personal violence as he walked 
through the streets of London, and when he sought 
the shelter of his own house, his windows were broken 
by an infuriated mob. The " Jingo " Press did not get 
quite so far as a Turkish newspaper which printed a 
detailed biography of "the man Gladstone, projector 
of mischief." This set forth how he was " born in 1796, 
the offspring of the headlong passion of a Bulgarian 



THE FIERY CROSS, 93 

named Demitri, the servant of a pig merchant named 
Nestory." He went to London in charge of some 
pigs his master desired to sell. Desiring to pass 
himself off as an Englishman, he changed his Bul- 
garian name, Grozadin, to Gladstone. " His gluttony 
for gold makes Gladstone look yellow. According to 
those who know him he is of middling height, with a 
yellow face, wearing closely cut whiskers in the Euro- 
pean style, and as a sign of his satanic spirit his fore- 
head and upper forehead are bare. His evil temper 
has made his hair fall off, so that from a distance he 
might be taken for quite bald." This was, of course, 
too grotesque for imitation in English newspapers. 
But some managed to distinguish themselves and earn 
the approval of the music-halls by the violence of their 
attack upon the denouncer of Turkish infamy. 

Whilst recovering something of his ancient power 
in the provinces, Mr. Gladstone was by no means 
sustained by the full support of the Liberal members 
of the House of Commons. It was then recognized 
as an awkward and an inconvenient thing that, after 
all that had happened consequent on the arrangement 
at the Reform Club in 1875, he should be sweeping 
back with torrential force to his old position as Leader. 
A feeling of loyalty to Lord Hartington, who had done 
the very best possible for him in the position to which 
he had been unwillingly summoned, influenced some 
Liberal members. Others were not absolutely free 
from sympath}^ with, or apprehension of, the Jingo 
spirit just then rampant. 



94 MR. GLADSTONE. 

Early in the Session of 1877 Mr. Gladstone tabled 
five resolutions on the Eastern Question. They 
embodied an expression of dissatisfaction with the 
conduct of the Porte, and a declaration that until 
guarantees on behalf of her subject populations were 
forthcoming, Turkey should be deemed to have lost 
all claim to receive either the material or moral sup- 
port of the British Crown. The movement was re- 
ceived very coldly by the Liberals. Sir John Lubbock 
gave notice that, on the resolutions being moved, he 
would move the previous question. There was talk 
of a serious split in the party, and anxious negotia- 
tions were carried on. These resulted in patching up 
the breach, and when, at the close of five nights' de- 
bate, the division took place, Mr. Gladstone received 
the support of his colleagues on the Front Bench, and 
of the main body of the Liberal party. But the reso- 
lutions were negatived by a majority of 131 in a House 
of 577 members. 

This seemed a hopeless struggle. Undeterred, Mr. 
Gladstone fought on. Feeling against him on the 
part of the majority of the House ran so high that 
one night in the Session of 1878, as he was proceeding 
to record his vote, a mob of Conservative gentlemen 
congregating at the glass door in the other division 
lobby set up a prolonged yell of execration, distinctly 
heard in the House. This did not cow him, nor did 
bitter attacks in the newspapers, nor the lukewarm- 
ness of friends make him quail. " My purpose," he 
said at Oxford, speaking on the eve of the Session of 



THE FIERY CROSS. 95 

1878, " is, day and night, week by week, month by 
month, to counter-work what I believe to be the pur- 
pose of Lord Beaconsfield." 

That resolve was finally crowned by the first Mid- 
lothian campaign, which opened in November, 1879. 
The county of Edinburgh was represented by Lord 
Dalkeith, son and heir of the Duke of Buccleuch. It 
seemed an impregnable fortress of Conservatism. If 
it could be stormed, anything else on the line of battle 
might surely be carried. Mr. Gladstone undertook 
the task with breezy courage and contagious con- 
fidence. His journey northward partook of the 
character of a triumphal procession. At Carlisle, 
Hawick, Galashiels, wherever the train stopped, the 
populace mustered to cheer the champion of humanity 
even against Turkey. All Edinburgh seemed to have 
turned out in the streets to welcome him, a torch- 
light procession accompanying him on his way to 
Dalmeny, where he became the guest of Lord Eose- 
bery. He remained in Scotland a fortnight, speaking 
sometimes twice a day to enormous audiences glowing 
in the fire of his eloquence. His homeward journey 
was marked by outbursts of popular enthusiasm, even 
of fuller tide than that which greeted him when he 
set out. 

In the spring of 1880, Lord Beaconsfield, encouraged 
by success at the poll in Southwark and Liverpool, re- 
solved to chance a general election. The announce- 
ment of the proximate dissolution was the signal for 
Mr. Gladstone's once more carrying the fiery cross 



96 MR. GLADSTONE. 

beyond the Tweed. Upon Midlothian were centred the 
interests of the general election. He won the seat by 
1,579 votes against 1,368 polled by Lord Dalkeith. 
When the final poll of the general election was made 
up it appeared that the new House of Commons was 
composed of 354 Liberals, against 236 Conservatives 
and 62 Home Rulers, — a Liberal majority of bQ over 
a possible combination of antagonists. 



CHAPTER X. 

PREMIER AGAIN. 

Lord Beaconsfield did not wait for the final returns 
from the poll before admitting his defeat. He placed 
his resignation in the hands of Her Majesty, and the 
question arose, Who is to succeed him as First Min- 
ister of the Crown ? From one point of view there 
seemed no possibility of diversity of answer. One 
man single-handed, fighting against enormous odds, 
had broken down the strength of the most powerful 
Conservative Ministry of modern times, and on its 
ruins had built up a massive structure of Liberal 
majority. The country called aloud for Mr. Glad- 
stone, and viewed with impatience efforts made to set 
aside his claims. These were not without justification, 
though they seemed at the time peculiarly persistent. 
Lord Hartington was still nominally the Leader of the 
Liberal party. He had at great sacrifice of personal 
inclination come forward at a critical time and under- 
taken the drudgery of the Leadership. It was only 
courteous to give him the opportunity of declining the 
task of forming a Ministry. But when Lord Harting- 
ton, in spite, it is understood, of unusual pressure put 
upon him, shrank from attempting to achieve the im- 
possible, attention was turned in another direction. 
Lord Granville was sent for and invited to form a 

7 



98 MR. GLADSTONE. 

Ministry. Not less clearly than Lord Hartington he 
recognized the inevitableness of the situation, and 
pointed to Mr. Gladstone as the only possible Premier. 
Finally came the summons to Mr. Gladstone, who 
promptly undertook a task to which he had earlier 
been called by the voice of an overpowering majority 
of the people. 

When the Ministrj^ was completed, the list pre- 
sented an appearance of strength and stability that 
promised a long, honorable, and useful career. Lord 
Granville and Lord Hartington, cordially accepting 
the situation, resumed their allegiance to their former 
chief, the one serving the new Ministry as Foreign 
Secretary, the other as Secretary of State for India. 
Mr. Gladstone coupled with the office of First Lord of 
the Treasury the duties of Chancellor of the Exche- 
quer. Sir William Harcourt, preferring not to pursue 
the pathway opened for him when he was made a Law 
Officer of the Crown, became Home Secretary. Mr. 
Childers was Secretary for War. Lord Kimberley 
cared for the Colonies. Lord Northbrook was First 
Lord of the Admiralty. Mr. Forster was Chief Secre- 
tary for Ireland. The Earl of Selborne presided in 
the House of Lords as Lord Chancellor. Earl Spencer 
was Lord President of the Council. The Duke of 
Argyll and Mr. Bright divided between them the 
posts of Lord Privy Seal and Chancellor of the Duchy 
of Lancaster, whose importance arose almost exclu- 
sively from the fact that they carried with them seats 
in the Cabinet. 



PREMIER AGAIN. 99 

As the stirring of the depths of Eadicalism had 
had much to do with the great triumph at the polls, 
Mr. Gladstone found it necessary to leaven his admin- 
istration by material drawn from below the gangway. 
The two most prominent members seated in that part 
of the House during the preceding Parliament were 
Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain. That both 
would have office conferred upon them was regarded 
as a matter of course. It was also the general im- 
pression, based upon consideration of his longer 
Parliamentary standing, that Sir Charles Dilke 
would receive the higher promotion. There was 
some surprise when it was announced that Mr. 
Chamberlain at a stride took his seat in the Cabinet 
as President of the Board of Trade, Sir Charles 
Dilke being content with the post of Under Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs. 

Other new blood infused into the Ministry was 
contributed by Mr. Herschell, who was knighted and 
made Solicitor-General; Mr. Osborne Morgan, who 
became Judge-Advocate-General ; Mr. Fawcett, Post- 
master-General ; Mr. Mundella, Vice-President of 
the Council ; whilst among the Under Secretaries for 
the Home Department modestly figured the name of 
Arthur Wellesley Peel, he and the House all un- 
knowing that before many years had passed he would 
prove himself one of the best Speakers that ever sat 
in the Chair. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE BRADLAUGH BLIGHT. 

With a well- trimmed ship, splendidly manned, and 
the full breeze of popular favor behind it, Mr. Glad- 
stone's second Administration set out on what prom- 
ised to be a pleasant and prosperous voyage. But 
before it was warped out of dock there befel an inci- 
dent fraught with consequences which, more than 
anything else, brought about final shipwreck. The 
cloud was at first no bigger than a man's hand. The 
new Parliament met on the 29th of April, and, Mr. 
Brand having been re-elected Speaker, the process 
of swearing-in Members proceeded. On the third 
day Mr. Bradlaugh, who had been elected member 
for Northampton, claimed the right to make affirma- 
tion instead of taking the oath. That is an alterna- 
tive, selection of which by a member in ordinary 
circumstances attracts no notice. Mr. Bright, pres- 
ently coming back after re-election, made affirmation, 
as his brother and other Members of his faith had 
done. Mr. Bradlaugh's case was notoriously differ- 
ent. He admitted himself disqualified from taking 
the oath because he did not believe in the existence 
of the Deity invoked. 

Had the Speaker, when privately approached on 
the subject, acceded to the member for Northamp- 



THE BRADLAUGH BLIGHT. 101 

ton's request and permitted him to make affirmation, 
the incident would have escaped the attention of the 
House, the whole course of the Session, and of some 
that succeeded it, would have been altered. That 
Mr. Bradlaugh was right in his contention was, after 
years of controversy, conceded by the House, which 
went the length of authorizing the erasure from its 
journal of a declaration to the contrary. The 
Speaker shrank from taking on himself responsibil- 
ity in the matter. He invited the House to deal 
with it, and on the motion of Lord Frederick Caven- 
dish, one of the minor Ministers whom the absurd 
rules controlling the acceptance of office permitted 
to be present at this juncture, a Select Committee 
was appointed to inquire into the subject. Sir 
Stafford Northcote seconded the motion, and though 
there was some restiveness displayed by the young 
Tory lions, no serious indication was forthcoming of 
all this apparently simple episode portended. 

A week later, when motion was made to nominate 
the Committee, the breeze began to stir. Sir Henry 
Wolff, making his first appearance in this memor- 
able controversy, moved the previous question, and 
was seconded in a noisy speech by Mr. Stanley Leigh- 
ton. The leaders of the Opposition still hung back. 
What movement they made was in support of the 
Ministry. Sir John Holker, ex-Attorney-General, 
advised Sir Henry Wolff not to proceed with his 
amendment, advice which he showed a disposition 
to accept. But the Irish members now took up the 



102 MR. GLADSTONE. 

running, and a division was forced, the motion being 
carried by a considerable majority. 

At this stage the House, hitherto sheep without 
shepherds, adjourned in order to complete the re- 
election of Ministers. In this interval the militant 
party had opportunity of considering a situation the 
potentialities of which, as affording a means of har- 
assing the Government, daily grew. The interposi- 
tion of the Irish members was full of hope. They 
as Catholics would be impelled to resist to the 
utmost the incursion upon the House of Commons of 
an avowed Atheist. Amongst Liberals there were 
many devout men who would shrink even at Mr. 
Gladstone's bidding from supporting the claims of 
Mr. Bradlaugh. Right honorable gentlemen on the 
Front Opposition Bench were the chief difficulty, 
with the keener-sighted tacticians below the gang- 
way. But if they would not move they must be 
shoved ahead. 

The Committee, by the casting vote of the chair- 
man, decided that Mr. Bradlaugh, not belonging to 
the class of persons who like Quakers and Moravians 
are by law exempt from the necessity of taking the 
oath, might not make affirmation on taking his seat. 
Mr. Bradlaugh met this difficulty by an unexpected 
move. Since the House by the decision of its com- 
mittee objected to his making affirmation, he was 
ready to oblige it by taking the oath. 

On the 21st of May (1880) the House resumed its 
sittings, its crowded appearance testifying to high 



THE BRADLAUGH BLIGHT. 103 

expectation. The empty spaces on the Treasury 
Bench were now filled up by Ministers duly re- 
elected. Mr. Bradlaugh was observed standing below 
the bar in the position assigned to new members 
waiting to be sworn in. The Speaker pronounced 
the usual formula, "Members desiring to take their 
seats will please come to the table." Thereupon 
Mr. Bradlaugh strode forward. Sir Henry Wolff, 
who had obtained a convenient strategic position at 
the corner of the Front Bench below the gangway, 
sprang to his feet with loud cry, " I object I " The 
House was filled with sudden uproar. Sir Henry 
Wolff was on his feet on one side. Immediately 
opposite him Mr. Dillwyn upstanding, both gesticu- 
lating, whilst at the table stood Mr. Bradlaugh with 
hand outstretched to take the oath Sir Erskine May, 
then clerk at the table, had, in the ordinary perform- 
ance of his duty, advanced to tender to him. 

Mr. Bradlaugh presently withdrawing in obedience 
to instructions from the Speaker, animated debate 
ensued. Sir Henry Wolff moved that Mr. Bradlaugh 
be not allowed to take the oath. Mr. Gladstone 
now interposed, moving as an amendment that the 
case be referred to a Select Committee, with instruc- 
tions to consider and report whether the House had 
any right, founded on precedent or otherwise, by a 
resolution to prevent a duly elected member from 
taking the oath. The progress made since the busi- 
ness first opened was testified to by Sir Stafford 
Northcote now throwing in his lot with the militant 



104 MR. GLADSTONE. 

party below the gangway. He declared his opposi- 
tion to Mr. Gladstone's proposal, and his readiness 
to vote with Sir Henry Wolff. The debate was 
adjourned till the following Monday, when Lord 
Randolph Churchill made his first appearance on the 
scene, creating a profound impression by the vigor 
with which he supported Sir Henry Wolff's motion. 
On a division Mr. Gladstone's proposal for a new 
Committee was carried by 289 against 214, — a sig- 
nificant diminution of the normal Ministerial major- 
ity that inspired the now united Opposition to fresh 
effort. 

The ball set rolling was kicked with increasing 
vigor. From the Opposition point of view the con- 
troversy served a double debt to pay. It not only 
harassed the Government, and sowed the seed of dis- 
cord within its ranks, but by filling up time it pre- 
vented the accomplishment of those large important 
Liberal measures which Mr. Gladstone, fresh from 
a great victory at the poll, was eager to put forward. 

As will appear from this brief narrative, Sir Henry 
Wolff was the actual originator of the cleverly con- 
ceived and ably engineered cabal. Lord Randolph 
Churchill, coming on the scene a little later in the 
day, promptly took the lead. Mr. John Gorst was 
recruited for active service, and forthwith was created 
— three all told — the historic Fourth Party. Mr. 
Arthur Balfour later entered upon a sort of novitiate. 
But he never fully took the vows, or altogether was 
one of the Brotherhood. 



THE BRA DL A UGH FLIGHT. 105 

They were ready to harass the Government on any 
score, but the Bradlaugh Question, as the most 
promising, was cherished with infinite care and 
assiduity. The second Select Committee nominated 
by Mr. Gladstone came to the conclusion that, whilst 
Mr. Bradlaugh might not take the oath, there was 
no reason why he should not be permitted to affirm, 
assuming the responsibility of any legal consequences 
that might follow. Mr. Bradlaugh, whose complais- 
ance was illimitable, went back to his original 
proposal to affirm. On his behalf Mr. Labouchere 
moved a resolution authorizing the member for 
Northampton to make affirmation. On this the 
House debated through two long nights. Mr. Bright 
interposed, making a powerful and eloquent appeal 
for toleration. On the second night Mr. Gladstone 
spoke to a crowded and excited House. It was 
known by this time that the Government were in a 
tight place. Earlier efforts to obtain full inquiry 
had resulted in significant diminution of their major- 
ity on the very threshold of the new Parliament. 
Inquiries made by the Whips pointed to the conclu- 
sion that, if Ministers associated themselves with 
Mr. Labouchere's motion they would suffer defeat. 
In this dilemma Mr. Gladstone adopted an atti- 
tude that grew familiar through the long-continued 
struggle. "We believe it to be our duty," he said, 
"frankly to offer our best advice in circumstances 
for which we are in no way responsible, and then to 
leave the matter in the hands of the House. " 



106 MR. GLADSTONE. 

This way of putting the question is thoroughly 
understood in the House of Commons. It simply 
means that ordinary supporters of the Government 
are at liberty, in this particular case, to follow their 
personal convictions and inclinations, voting, if they 
please, against Ministers without incurring the re- 
sponsibility of imperilling the position of the Gov- 
ernment. Sir Hardinge Giffard had met Mr. 
Labouchere's motion with an amendment declaring 
that Mr. Bradlaugh be permitted neither to take the 
oath nor to affirm. Shortly after midnight the divis- 
ion was called in a House of over 500 members, 
strung to a pitch of highest excitement. It being a 
private member's motion there was no question of 
the action of the Ministerial tellers. Mr. Labou- 
chere and the seconder of the motion " told " the 
Ayes, but it was Mr. Rowland Winn and Sir William 
Dyke, official Whips of the Opposition, that led the 
Noes, gathering into the unaccustomed lobby some 
devout Liberals, whilst many more, stopping short 
of actual revolt against Mr. Gladstone's lead, ab- 
stained from voting. When the paper was handed 
to Mr. Winn in token that the Opposition had 
triumphed there followed a scene of mad delight, 
members of the Opposition actually embracing each 
other in the ecstasy of delight at a turn of events in 
which they had at one blow honored God and stricken 
Mr. Gladstone. When silence was restored Mr. 
Winn read out the figures showing that 230 had 
voted for the motion and 275 against. Amid renewed 



THE BRADLAUGH BLIGHT. 107 

cheering Sir Hardinge Giffard's motion was carried 
without spoken dissent, and on the journals of the 
House was entered the resolution declaring Mr. 
Bradlaugh incompetent to sit as a member. 

Nearly eleven years later the member for North- 
ampton lay dying in his modest home in Circus Road. 
Once more, for the last time, the House of Commons was 
agitated by " the Bradlaugh Question." Motion was 
made that the House should expunge from its journals 
the resolution entered in the early days of the great 
Liberal Parliament. It was a hard task to impose. 
Already the House had tacitly admitted its error, and 
Mr. Bradlaugh, after hopelessly fighting against Con- 
servative conviction when Mr. Gladstone was in office, 
was permitted quietly to take his seat as soon as a 
Conservative majority made possible a Conservative 
Ministry. Since the incoming of Lord Salisbury's 
Government, in 1886, Mr. Bradlaugh, again trium- 
phantly re-elected at Northampton, had been accepted 
as one of the most useful and most moderate mem- 
bers of the House. That was one thing. It was 
quite another for the Imperial House of Commons 
publicly to put on the white sheet and, candle in hand, 
admit that it was in error when, in June, 1880, it 
had followed the leadership of Sir Hardinge Giffard, 
posed against Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright. 

The House of Commons, though prone to be led 
astray by passion and prejudice, is, in the end, ever 
just and generous. Without a dissentient vote, it 
agreed to the expunging of the resolution ; some 



108 MR. GLADSTONE. 

who had prominently supported it generously regret- 
ting that at the hour the decision took effect Death 
had Mr. Bradlaugh in too close grip for him to learn 
the glad tidings. 

Between these two dates, 1880 and 1891, a great 
deal happened, giving prominence to Mr. Bradlaugh 
and his claim to represent Northampton in the House 
of Commons. Beaten in the Courts of Law, the pre- 
cincts of the House of Commons barred against him, 
he came up time after time, was thrice heard at the 
bar, and once forcibly thrust forth from the Lobby of 
the House. Mr. Gladstone persisted in his attitude 
of non-official connection with the matter. When divi- 
sions were taken he voted in the sense that governed 
the final conclusion of the House. But, as he pointed 
out, in this matter he was clearly not Leader, and he 
relegated to Sir Stafford Northcote the duty of leading 
the House whenever the Bradlaugh business came 
up. 

When the record of his long and busy life comes to 
be studied by posterity, there will surely be nothing 
that redounds with fuller force to his credit than his 
attitude and action in this pitiful controversy. For 
a man of his devotional habits, his strong, ever-present 
faith in God, it must have been not without pained 
effort that he ranged himself on the side of an avowed 
Atheist. It chanced that the Atheist in this par- 
ticular quarrel had truth and justice on his side ; and 
for truth and justice Mr. Gladstone has always been 
ready to fight against any odds. Deserted by some 



rHE BRADLAUGH BLIGHT. 109 

of the most esteemed of his followers, beaten over and 
over again in the division lobby, with Lord Randolph 
Churchill and Sir Henry Wolff avowed and accepted 
champions of Christianity, he, fighting on the other 
side, contributed to the recurrent debate some of the 
finest speeches the House had listened to even from 
his lips. • 

In 1883 the Government made one desperate 
attempt to put an end to a controversy which, dili- 
gently fed, clogged the wheels of public business, 
and slowly but surely undermined the authority of 
Government. A Bill was brought in, extending the 
conditions under which a man might claim to make 
affirmation. On the second reading Mr. Gladstone 
delivered a speech, the effect of which was seen in the 
division-lobby. " I have no fear of Atheism in this 
House," he said, in a concluding passage. " Truth is 
the expression of the Divine mind, and, however 
little our feeble vision may be able to discern the 
means by which God may provide for its preservation, 
we may leave the matter in His hands, and we may be 
sure that a firm and courageous application of every 
principle of equity and of justice is the best method we 
can adopt for the preservation and influence of truth. 
I must painfully record my opinion that grave injury 
has been done to religion in many minds — not in in- 
structed minds, but in those which are ill-instructed 
or partially instructed, and which have large claims on 
our consideration — in consequence of steps which have, 
unhappily, been taken. Great mischief has been done 



110 MR. GLADSTONE. 

in many minds through the resistance offered to a man 
elected by the constituency of Northampton, which a 
portion of the people believe to be unjust. When 
they see the profession of religion, and the interest of 
religion, ostensibly associated with what they are 
deeply convinced is injustice, they are led to questions 
about religion itself. Unbelief attracts a sympathy 
which it would not otherwise enjoy, and the upshot is 
to impair those convictions and that religious faith 
the loss of which I believe to be the most inexpressible 
calamity which can fall either upon a man or upon a 
nation." 

This great speech very nearly won the day. Up to 
the last it was thought the second reading of the Bill 
would be carried. But when all were "told" the 
paper was again handed to Mr. Rowland Winn in token 
of the further triumph of intolerance. " Ayes to the 
right, 289 ; Noes to the left, 292." Only a majority of 
three. But it served, and Mr. Gladstone, finally re- 
tiring from the conflict, left it to a Conservative Min- 
istry, with a large majority at their back, in future 
years to consent to the quiet seating of Mr. Bradlaugh 
as member for Northampton. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE FOURTH PARTY. 

The Fourth Party, having tasted blood, were not in- 
clined to withdraw from the hunt, were rather prone 
to pursue it with added zest. In ordinary cases a 
Government is fronted by a regular Opposition of 
more or less personal ability and numerical force. It 
was Mr. Gladstone's ill-fortune, developed in the 
earliest days of his second Administration, to be 
faced by not one Opposition, but four. There was 
the regular Opposition led by Sir Stafford Northcote. 
There was the Fourth Party led by Lord Randolph 
Churchill ; there were the Irish members led by Mr. 
Parnell; and there were sections of his own party, 
captained by various individuals in succession, enjoy- 
ing in common the conviction that they knew a great 
deal better than their titular leader, and could manage 
Imperial and Parliamentary business with greater 
advantage to the State. 

Of all, the Fourth Party, numerically the smallest, 
was the most dangerous, and through the life of the 
Parliament wrought more harm to Mr. Gladstone than 
did any other. We have seen how they engineered 
the Bradlaugh difficulty, compelling Sir Stafford 
Northcote and his colleagues on the Front Bench, 



112 MR. GLADSTONE. 

in opposition to their earlier inclinations and con- 
victions, to fall in line behind them. Whatever 
might be the business the Government took in hand, 
whether it related to foreign affairs or home topics, 
the Fourth Party settled upon it with mischievous 
intent. Their industry was inexhaustible, their 
resources boundless. In the dullest intervals one of 
the three was certain to be found at his post, ready, if 
opportunity chanced, to put a spoke in the Govern- 
ment wheel. On field-nights they mustered their full 
number, playing into each other's hands with a skill 
and audacity that charmed an assembly always ready 
to be amused. 

Not the least attractive feature in the entertain- 
ment was the impartial manner with which the Fourth 
Party, having belabored Mr. Gladstone, turned to 
browbeat Sir Stafford Northcote. The worm will 
turn at last, and one night the House was delighted 
by Sir Stafford, the mildest-mannered man who 
ever fought in the political arena, turning upon his 
tormentors below the gangway, and describing Lord 
Randolph Churchill as playing the part of " bonnet " 
in a game led by the Government. That was an ex- 
ceptional remonstrance, wrung from his lips under 
direct provocation. What happened as a rule was, 
that Sir Stafford Northcote and his colleagues on the 
Front Bench, including the two statesmen scornfully 
described by Lord Randolph as " Marshall and Snel- 
grove," after betraying a disposition to tread more 
beaten tracks of Opposition, were hustled into follow- 



THE FOURTH PARTY. H^ 

ing the Fourth Party in their scamper across the 

country. 

When they showed signs of revolt, Lord Randolph 
cracked the whip and they came to heel. In the 
Session of 1883, he published a sort of manifesto, in 
which he called upon Lord Salisbury to save the 
country by taking on himself the more vigorous 
leadership of the Conservative party. If he were 
indisposed to come forward, Lord Randolph more 
than hinted the difficulty might be met from other 
sources. But he would have none of " the bourgeois 
placemen, honorable Tadpoles, hungry Tapers, Irish 
lawyers" who compose "the body of third-rate 
statesmen such as were good enough to fill subordi- 
nate offices while Lord Beaconsfield was alive." The 
member for Woodstock, then verging on the mature 
age of thirty-four, was dismayed at " the series of 
neglected opportunities, pusillanimity, combativeness 
at^wrong moments, vacillation, dread of responsibil- 
ity, repression and discouragement of hardworking 
followers, collusions with the Government, hankerings 
after coalition, jealousies, commonplaces, and want of 
perception on the part of the former lieutenants of 
Lord Beaconsfield." 

Thus did the Leader of the Fourth Party, with 
impartial hand, check the jubilation with which right 
honorable gentlemen in the Front Opposition Bench 
watched his lively salUes upon the Government citadel. 
It must be admitted that Mr. Gladstone was him- 
self largely responsible for bringing about the state 



114 MR. GLADSTONE. 

of things by which he and his Government were the 
chief sufferers. He, more than any one else, assisted 
to make the reputation of Lord Randolph Churchill. 
Had Mr. Disraeli been in his position, he would have 
acted as he did in the not dissimilar circumstances of 
the day when Lord Cranborne, afterwards Marquis 
of Salisbury, sat below the gangway and warned the 
House of Commons that " if they borrowed their 
political ethics from the ethics of a political adventurer 
they might depend upon it the whole of their rep- 
resentative institutions, would crumble beneath their 
feet." Mr. Disraeli sat with folded arms and far-away 
look in his eyes, as if he were the last person in the 
world concerned in this tirade. That is not an 
attitude encouraging to persistent attack, and so 
Lord Cranborne found it. It was one impossible 
for Mr. Gladstone to assume. When Lord Randolph 
Churchill spoke at him he listened with almost pained 
intentness, frequently interrupted with retort or 
corrections. Almost inevitably, when the brilliant 
and audacious free lance had resumed his seat, the 
Premier rose to reply. With a man of Lord Ran- 
dolph's sterling capacity and born Parliamentary 
aptitude this is all that was needed to give him a 
position in the House of Commons. 

The Fourth Party were ready to attack the Govern- 
ment on all points. There was one on which they 
were specially effective. It is one of the traditions 
of English political life, more or less strictly observed, 
that Ministers shall not be hampered by party spirit 



THE FOURTH PARTY. 115 

when administering their Foreign Policy. At certain 
stages foreign policy may, of course, be made the sub- 
ject for debate and even of censure. But the field is 
one in which partisanship must yield to patriotism. 
Whilst this principle was applicable to ex-Ministers 
seated on the Front Opposition Bench, private mem- 
bers below the gangway were, if they pleased, free 
from its supervision. Lord Randolph Churchill and 
his merry men might nightly harass the Government 
with questions upon their foreign relations, or might 
from time to time move resolutions raising inconven- 
ient debate. That was no affair of right honorable 
gentlemen on the Front Opposition Bench. They 
were, indeed, hampered by the fact that trouble in 
Afghanistan and in South Africa, which early beset Mr. 
Gladstone, arose directly out of acts and engagements 
performed by them whilst they were in office. Lord 
Randolph Churchill, Sir Henry Wolff, and Mr. Gorst 
wore no such shackles. It is not improbable that the 
opportunity of incidentally emphasizing in. course of 
debate the errors and incompetencies of their own 
esteemed leaders when in office lent fresh zest to the 
pursuit of their successors struggling in the meshes 
inherited. 

One of the incidents in Lord Beaconsfield's hank- 
ering after " a scientific frontier " to the north of our 
Indian Empire was the Treaty of Gandamak, signed 
on the 5th of May, 1879, with the Ameer of Afghan- 
istan. By this engagement Great Britain undertook 
to pay the Ameer <£60,000 a year, supporting him 



116 MR. GLADSTONE. 

against any foreign enemy with money, arms, and 
men. The only foreign enemy possible was Russia, 
who was by this Convention fondly supposed to have 
received a serious check at the hands of the great 
British statesman. In consideration of the bribe, 
Yakoob Khan, Ameer at the time, consented to 
receive a British envoy in residence at Cabul, and to 
meet Lord Beaconsfield's views in the matter of the 
scientific frontier. 

There followed in rapid succession the massacre 
at Cabul of Louis Cavagnari and his helpless staff; 
the fresh occupation of Cabul by British troops ; the 
deposition of Yakoob Khan; the whole of Afghanis- 
tan up in arms, at least three chieftains fighting for 
the crown. Scarcely had the Liberal Government 
settled down to work, when news came of the defeat 
of British forces in Afghanistan, the rout at Mai- 
wand, and the flight of the remnant of the forces to 
find doubtful refuge in Kandahar. Next it was 
known that Ayoub Khan, following up his triumph 
at Maiwand, was beleaguering Kandahar with forces 
that hopelessly overmastered its little garrison. 

Obviously this was a state of things for which Mr. 
Gladstone and his Government had no responsibil- 
ity. It was, in fact, the legacy of a policy which, 
when in Opposition, he had vigorously fought. 
Speaking at Edinburgh in 1884, he said: "A long 
series of illustrious statesmen in the office of Gov- 
ernor-General, including in one case at least — per- 
haps in more — a Tory statesman, the excellent Lord 



THE FOURTH PARTY. H'^ 

Mayo, labored with an unwearied patience to efface 
the memory of the former error and the former 
crime, and to build up relations of peace and amity 
with the brave mountaineers of Afghanistan. But 
under the policy of the two last years of Lord 
Beaconsfield's Government this was all reversed; 
and by an undertaking which, I think, united crimi- 
nality and folly in a higher degree than any under- 
taking in my recollection, the United Kingdom of 
Afghanistan was broken to pieces; its valleys were 
deluged with blood, its people were again provoked 
into hatred of England; and if anything could by 
possibility have effectually promoted that supposed 
ambition of Russia — if anything could have made 
the ambition of Russia really formidable — it was 
undoubtedly the chance of throwing the people of 
Afghanistan by our hostile measures into the arms 
of the Emperor." 

That had been his view of the situation set forth 
whilst the seed was being sown which blossomed in 
the battle of Maiwand. But the British public do 
not look too closely into cause and effect, more espe-- 
cially when the matters at issue relate to Foreign 
Policy. Under Mr. Gladstone's Premiership, British 
arms in India had suffered a crushing defeat, and, 
in some measure insensibly, certainly effectively, 
Mr. Gladstone and his Government were regarded as 
responsible for the reverse. Nor did they profit by 
the brilliant success of Sir Frederick Roberts in his 
famous march on Kandahar. That was all to the 



118 MR. GLADSTONE. 

credit of the General and the British army, who had, 
not for the first time in history, come to the rescue 
of a belated, incompetent Ministry. 

Darker and more permanent in its effect was the 
cloud rising in South Africa which fell over the still 
young Government. Majuba Hill, like Maiwand, 
was a direct result of the policy of the preceding 
Government, against which Mr. Gladstone had in 
vain lifted up his voice. In 1877, at a time when 
the Jingo fever was at its height, Sir Theophilus 
Shepstone was sent out by Lord Carnarvon to inquire 
into the condition of affairs in the Transvaal Re- 
public. Sir Theophilus, not unmindful of Lord 
Carnarvon's cherished dream of South African Con- 
federation under the British Crown, promptly settled 
the Boers' business by hoisting the British flag in 
their territory. As Mr. Gladstone described it at 
the time, "the Government annexed the Transvaal 
territory, inhabited by a free European, Christian, 
and Republican community, which they thought 
proper to bring within the limits of a Monarchy, 
although out of 8,000 persons in that Republic quali- 
fied to vote upon the subject, we were told that 6,500 
protested against it." 

In vain deputations from the Boers came over to 
England and in the home of liberty pleaded for 
deliverance from this act of high tyranny. They 
found in Mr. Gladstone an eloquent, but at the time 
powerless, advocate. "Is it not wonderful," he, 
speaking in the Midlothian Campaign that preceded 



THE FOURTH PARTY. 119 

the general election, asked, "to those who are free- 
men, and whose fathers had been freemen, and who 
hope that their children will be freemen, and who 
consider that freedom is an essential condition of 
civil life, and that without it you can have nothing 
great and nothing noble in political society — that 
we are led by an Administration, and led, I admit, 
by Parliament, to find ourselves in this position, 
that we are to march upon another body of freemen, 
and against their will to subject them to despotic 
Government ? " 

But the thing was done, and when three months 
later Mr. Gladstone came into power he found the 
Transvaal seething with a sense of the wrong done 
to it. Looked back upon with the advantage of full 
knowledge of subsequent events, it would obviously 
have been better for all parties had Mr. Gladstone, 
on coming into office, carried into effect the opinions 
expressed when in opposition. There would have 
been an outburst of angry Jingo feeling and much 
talk in music halls and cutlery-manufacturing towns 
of " trailing the British flag in the dust. " That all 
came in due time, with much else far more damag- 
ing. It must, however, be remembered that it is an 
axiom of British statesmanship that foreign policy 
is continuous. Ministries may come and Ministries 
may go, but the attitude of Great ^Britain towards 
foreign Powers and States must remain bound by 
whatever treaties or engagements have been entered 
upon. 



120 MR. GLADSTONE. 

The Gladstone Government continued to hold the 
Transvaal Republic in the bonds fastened upon it by 
the Beaconsfield Administration. Before the new 
Government had been in power nine months the 
Transvaal was up in arms and declared itself once 
more a Republic. Shots were fired at Potchefstrom. 
Colonel Anstruther, marching on Pretoria, was faced 
by a body of Boers whose deadly rifles in ten minutes 
emptied the saddles of forty officers. Ingogo fol- 
lowed swiftly on Lang's Nek. Then came Majuba 
Hill, and the spectacle of British troops fleeing 
before the advance of a body of Boer farmers. This 
was even worse than Maiwand, and, following close 
upon that disaster, gave a final check to the wave of 
popular enthusiasm that a few months earlier had 
carried Mr. Gladstone into power. He and his col- 
leagues were no more responsible for Majuba Hill 
than they were for Maiwand. As has been shown, 
they had, on the contrary, done all men could do to 
defeat the policy that led up to these battlefields. 
They were at worst unlucky. But ill luck is the 
unpardonable sin with an Administration. 

What followed on Majuba filled the cup of bitter- 
ness the British public had twice had presented to it 
through the as yet brief term of the new Govern- 
ment's existence. There was still a third trial in 
store. Mr. Gladstone has, in a few sentences, de- 
scribed the situation at the time Sir Evelyn Wood 
found himself at the head of overwhelming reinforce- 
ments, and Cape Town was jubilant at the expecta- 



THE FOURTH PARTY. 121 

tion of seeing the Boers brought to book. " When in 
opposition we had," he said, "declared that in our 
judgment the attempt of the Administration then in 
power to put down the people of the Transvaal, to 
extinguish their freedom, and to annex them against 
their will to England, was a scandalous and disas- 
trous attempt. When we got into office, we were 
assured by all the local agents of the British Govern- 
ment — and I have no doubt they spoke in honor and 
sincerity — that the people of the Transvaal had 
changed their minds, and were perfectly contented to 
be annexed to the British Empire. That made it our 
duty to pause for a while, and for a short while, 
accordingly, we did pause. However much we had 
opposed the previous Government, it was our duty 
not to make changes without good and sufficient 
cause. But before we had been very long in office, 
the people of the Transvaal rose in arms, and showed 
us pretty well what their feelings and intentions were. 
They obtained several successes over the limited 
body of British troops then in South Africa. We felt 
it was an absolute duty, under those circumstances, 
to reinforce our military power in that region; 
and we sent a force to South Africa, which would 
unquestionably have been sufficient to defeat any 
power that the Datch Burghers could bring into the 
field against us. But the Boers asked us for an 
accommodation. What is called the Jingo party 
was horribly scandalized because we listened to that 
application. We had got our forces there ready to 



122 MR. GLADSTONE. 

chastise them. We might have shed their blood, we 
might have kxid prostrate on the field hundreds, pos- 
sibly thousands, of that small community, and then 
we should have vindicated the reputation of this 
country, according to that creed of the particular 
party. Having undoubted power in our hands, we 
thought that the time to be merciful is when you are 
strong. We were strong ; we could afford to be merci- 
ful. We entered into arrangements with the Trans- 
vaal, and the Transvaal recovered its independence. " 
When the terms of the armistice agreed upon 
by Sir Evelyn Wood were announced in the House 
of Commons, the Fourth Party were frantic with in- 
dignation. Lord Randolph Churchill could scarcely 
find parliamentary phrases in which to denounce 
the conduct of a Minister who had thus dis- 
honored England, and betrayed our countrymen 
at the Cape. Many years later Lord Randolph 
visited South Africa, spent some time in the Trans- 
vaal, and made himself personally acquainted with 
the existing state of things. He had the courage 
and the generosity publicly to admit that in 1881 
he had been wrong, and Mr. Gladstone had been 
right. Looking upon the whole transaction free from 
prejudice and with fuller knowledge, he saw in the 
action of the Gladstone Government, following on 
Majuba, not an act of degradation, but an outcome 
of statesmanship inspired by the loftiest motives, 
calculated to raise England still higher in the eyes 
of the civilized world. 



THE FOURTH PARTY. 123 

That was very good and very true for the year 
1892. But in the year 1881, the Fourth Party, in 
the House of Commons and out of it, taunted Mr. 
Gladstone with having betrayed and dishonored the 
country, sedulously fanning the breeze of unpopular- 
ity already chilling enthusiasm on the Treasurer 
Bench. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

EGYPT. 

Perhaps the most notable thing in Mr. Gladstone's 
second Administration is that he, a man of peace, 
his foreign policy broadly based on the principle of 
non-intervention, should have suffered continuously 
from foreign complications. Hardly had the mur- 
murs round the Transvaal capitulation begun to die 
away than there arose trouble in a fresh quarter — 
trouble that lasted to the end, and faced Mr. Glad- 
stone once more when, in 1892, he again assumed 
the Leadership of the House of Commons. 

As in Afghanistan and South Africa, the difficul- 
ties of the Gladstone Government in Egypt were a 
legacy from their predecessors. It was Lord Bea- 
consfield who had intervened in Egypt, joining in a 
copartnership with France which proved unwork- 
able, engendering irritation that more than once 
threatened open rupture. As early as 1875 Mr. 
Disraeli made the first dazzling stroke in the Anglo- 
Egyptian policy by the purchase of the Khedive's 
shares in the Suez Canal. Close upon this followed 
the despatch of Mr. Stephen Cave on a mission of 
inquiry into the state of Egyptian finance. Ismail 
Pacha, with an eye to a fresh loan, had invited the 
British Government to send out a capable authority. 



EGYPT. 125 

It was no particular business of Great Britain or 
of the Government which administered its affairs. 
But the proposal was very popular in the City, and 
the Government selected for the post one of their 
own colleagues. It is true that on undertaking the 
special mission Mr. Cave resigned the office of Judge 
Advocate-General. That, indeed, was inevitable. 
He was nevertheless a confidential emissary of the 
British Government, carrying with him the authority 
of an ex-Minister. 

The rest followed with regular steps. Mr. Cave 
having returned and reported, Mr. Rivers Wilson, 
Controller of the National Debt Office, was sent out 
to advise the Khedive. A joint mission, arranged 
by French and English bondholders, repaired to 
Cairo. In 1876, Ismail, growing suspicious of the 
toils closing round him, asserted his independence, 
brought back Nubar Pacha from exile, and shortly 
after dismissed him, packing off with him Mr. 
Rivers Wilson and M. Blignieres, the English and 
French Ministers imposed upon him. This was too 
much for the allied Powers. They drove Ismail from 
his throne and his palaces, placed his son Tewfik 
on the throne, reinstated their joint Ministers, and 
proposed to govern Egypt for the Egyptians. 

Such was the state of affairs when the Gladstone 
Ministry came into power at the end of April, 1880. 
" We found the Khedive upon the throne, '' says Mr. 
Gladstone. " We found a solemn engagement from 
the British Government to maintain him on the 



126 MR. GLADSTONE. 

throne. " The value of this pledge was soon tested. 
Early in January, 1883, an identical Note was 
addressed to the Khedive by the British and French 
Governments, avowing their determination to ward 
off by united effort all causes of external or internal 
complication which might menace the regime estab- 
lished in Egypt. Since Tewfik was placed on the 
throne, there had grown up a national party in Egypt 
which fretted under what was known as the Dual 
Control. In June, riot broke out in the streets of 
Alexandria. There was a brisk flight of Europeans 
out of Egypt. The Khedive was removed to Alex- 
andria and there set up his trembling Court. Gam- 
betta, one of the sponsors of the Dual Control, was 
out of office. His successor, M. de Freycinet, was 
opposed to active interference in the internal affairs 
of Egypt. The national party in Egypt had found 
their leader in Arabi Pacha, who, having been forced 
upon the Khedive in the position of War Minister, 
began to place Alexandria in a position to resist the 
encroachments of foreign Powers. On the 10th of 
July, Sir Beauchamp Seymour, in command of the 
British fleet, handed in an ultimatum announcing 
that unless the forts at Alexandria were surrendered 
the fleet would open fire upon them. The notice 
expired at seven o'clock on the morning of July 
11th, and punctually on the stroke of the hour the 
war-ships thundered. The French fleet, which in 
outward and visible sign of the Dual Control had 
been sharing sentinel duty with the British ships, 



EGYPT. 127 

steamed away out of sight, in ostentatious notifi- 
cation that it would have nothing to do with the 
business. 

The Egyptian guns, though of fine calibre, well 
mounted and well served, could not long withstand 
the fire of the eight ironclads and five gunboats 
which formed the British fleet. The fortifications 
were abandoned. Arabi withdrew with his forces 
inland, and for two days Alexandria was given up to 
rapine, finally stamped out by a force of British 
blue-jackets and marines. Arabi entrenched himself 
near Tel-el-Kebir, whither he was followed by Sir 
Garnet Wolseley. At dawn on the morning of Sep- 
tember 13th the little British army stole upon the 
Egyptian camp, carrying their first line of defence at 
the point of the bayonet. In half an hour it was all 
over. Arabi's chance was gone, and he a prisoner. 
Cairo, which had been held for Arabi, was taken 
without a struggle. Tewfik was escorted back to his 
palace, and the occupation of Egypt by the British 
actually commenced. 

Whilst British troops were barracked at Cairo and 
Alexandria, and a British fleet guarded the water- 
ways of Egypt, a pretty fiction was maintained at 
the Foreign Office, that England had really nothing 
to do with Egyptian affairs save to perform the 
policeman's part and keep order in the streets of 
Cairo. The Soudan, long in revolt against Egyp- 
tian rule, was in 1882 in full rebellion under the 
influence of the Mahdi. The Egyptian Government 



128 MR. GLADSTONE. 

placed Hicks Pacha, an English officer, in command 
of a motley army, and sent him to meet the Mahdi. 
He got no further than Kashgeil, where he fell fight- 
ing, his army annihilated. The news ran through 
the Soudan with that miraculous celerity peculiar 
to Eastern communities. The whole country was 
aflame. Khartoum, Sinkat, and Tokar, towns gar- 
risoned by Egyptian troops, were beleaguered by the 
Mahdi's forces. Berber, Dongola, and Kassala were 
threatened. Appeals were made to Lord Granville 
for advice and assistance. But the Home Govern- 
ment were in almost as difficult a place as the garri- 
son at Khartoum. France watched every movement 
in Egypt with angry suspicion. Worse still, there 
was a strong body of the Ministerial party in the 
House of Commons who resented the continued occu- 
pation of Egypt, and would have gone into open 
revolt had active operations at this time been 
extended to the Soudan. 

Advice Lord Granville gave, recommending the 
Egyptian Government to abandon all territory south 
of Wady Haifa. But as for money and troops — God 
bless you! — he had none to give. "Her Majesty's 
Government," the Foreign Secretary wrote in a 
despatch dated 30th December, " has no intention of 
employing British or Indian troops in the Soudan. " 
The Egyptian Government, thus left to themselves, 
did nothing. The Mahdi did much, his power in- 
creasing every day, the position of the beleaguered 
garrisons growing more critical. 



EGYPT. 129 

At length Lord Granville, insisting that the Sou- 
dan should be abandoned, proposed to send a British 
officer to Khartoum to make arrangements for the 
future Government of the country and the with- 
drawal of the garrisons. The post being offered to 
General Gordon, he promptly accepted it, and, as 
swiftly as a dromedary could carry him, made his 
way to Khartoum, where he was known of old, hav- 
ing worked in the Soudan for three years, engaged 
in battling with the slave trade. The population of 
Khartoum received him with wild enthusiasm. For 
a while it seemed that confidence in his hold over 
the Soudanese would be justified, and that his work 
would be accomplished without bloodshed. Mean- 
while, Baker Pacha, who had set out to fight the 
Mahdi's lieutenant, Osman Digna, and relieve the 
garrison at Suakim, was routed at Teb. Later came 
news that Tewfik Pacha, making a sortie from Sin- 
kat, had been cut to pieces, scarcely a man of his 
famished garrison left to tell the tale. 

These events forced the hand of the British Gov- 
ernment, pricking the bladder in which rattled their 
protest that they had nothing to do with the Soudan. 
Admiral Hewitt assumed supreme command in the 
Soudan, and General Graham marched on Trinkitat 
with a British force four thousand strong. Every 
inch of the ground was disputed by the Arabs under 
Osman Digna. At one time it seemed that Graham 
and his gallant army would be treated even as Hicks 
Pacha and his Egyptians had been. Advancing on 

9 



130 MR. GLADSTONE. 

Osman Digna encamped at Tamanieb, the British 
fell into an ambuscade. The Arabs dashed over 
their square like the Atlantic in a storm sweeps a 
ship's deck. For a while it seemed that all was lost. 
But the temporarily swamped square reformed. The 
second square came to its assistance. The Arabs 
were beaten off and Osman Digna was driven further 
into the desert. 

Meanwhile the Government at home were attacked 
with no less bitterness than were the squares of 
British soldiers, specks in the desert of the Soudan. 
Immediately on news of the fall of Sinkat reaching 
London, votes of censure were moved in the Lords 
by the Marquis of Salisbury, and in the Commons 
by Sir Stafford Northcote. For a whole week the 
battle raged in the Commons, and when a division 
was taken only 311 mustered for the defence of the 
Government against 292 voting with the Opposition. 
Thus was the Ministerial majority reduced to 19. 
A month later there was another vote of censure, 
Mr. Labouchere joining Lord Randolph Churchill in 
attacking the Ministerial policy in Egypt. There 
had been a Saturday sitting in order to make some 
progress with sadly delayed supply. The battle 
raged till six o'clock on Sunday morning, when the 
majority for the Ministry was further reduced to 17. 

Anxiety about the position of General Gordon at 
Khartoum grew. He had evidently caught a Tartar. 
Going out to Khartoum to administer affairs in the 
Soudan, he was shut up within the town, the Mahdi's 



EGYPT. 131 

men massed in invulnerable belt around him. On 
the 17th of May Lord Granville directed the Charg^ 
d'Affaires at Cairo to inform Gordon that as the plan 
for the evacuation of Khartoum had been abandoned 
and as no aggressive operations against the Mahdi 
were contemplated, he should consider how best to 
remove himself and his garrison from Khartoum. 
At this time, as Mr. Gladstone has testified, there 
was no evidence available by the Government that 
Gordon was in danger within the walls of Khartoum. 
"We believed," Mr. Gladstone said, "and I think 
we had reason to believe from his own expressions, 
that it was in the power of General Gordon to remove 
himself and those immediately associated with him 
from Khartoum by going to the south. General 
Gordon said himself, speaking of it as a thing dis- 
tinctly within his own power, that he would in cer- 
tain contingencies withdraw to the Equator. From 
the unhappy interruption of the telegraph we did not 
know, and could not estimate, the relations which 
General Gordon may have formed with others than 
those who were immediately associated with his own 
party. " 

As the days passed and resembled each other inas- 
much as they brought no news from Gordon, public 
anxiety deepened. On the eve of the Prorogation in 
August, 1884, though the Government still clung to 
the expression of belief that there was no necessity 
for an expedition to relieve Gordon, they were care- 
ful to obtain a vote to cover the expenditure should 



132 MR. GLADSTONE. 

it appear necessary. Conviction of the urgency of 
the case seems to have grown apace. On the 5th of 
August a vote had been asked for explicitly as a 
matter of precaution. Two days later, as Mr. Glad- 
stone has testified — on the 7th of August by tele- 
gram and on the 8th of August in a full and detailed 
paper — instructions sent by the Secretary for War 
on the part of the Government, were despatched to 
Egypt. " From that moment, " Mr. Gladstone says, 
"military preparations were never relaxed. The 
operations were continuous. I believe it would not 
be found possible to say that from that date forward 
any delay that could be avoided occurred. While 
our preparations were being made we did think the 
evidence reached a point which showed that a move- 
ment forward was necessary. That movement for- 
ward was directed, I think, about the 23rd of August, 
and either on that date or immediately after, Gen- 
eral Lord Wolseley undertook the command of the 
expedition to Egypt." 

On the 28th of January, 1885, Sir Charles Wilson 
arrived at Khartoum with a rescue party to find 
themselves too late. Two days earlier the citadel 
had fallen, and amongst the slain was the gallant 
Gordon. 



CHAPTER XIY. 

THE PENJDEH INCIDENT. 

As if Egypt were not burden enough for a Govern- 
ment to carry, trouble threatened on the Afghan 
frontier. As the result of patient negotiation, a 
Commission had been appointed for the delimitation 
of the Afghan frontier. Whilst the work of the 
Commission was quietly going forward, news came 
of an event delicately referred to in Parliamentary 
debate as the Penjdeh incident. On the 16th of 
March, 1884, an agreement had been entered into 
between British and Russian Commissioners cove- 
nanting that providing the Afghans did not advance 
or attack, the Russian troops would remain quies- 
cent. On the 30th of March the Russians advanced 
on Penjdeh, and after a bloody battle drove out the 
Afghans. 

This news reached London on the 9th of April, and 
created something like a panic. In view of British 
engagements to the Ameer, entered into by Lord 
Beaconsfield's Government, this assault was equiva- 
lent to an act of war. England, as we have seen, 
had pledged herself to support the Ameer against 
any foreign enemy with money, arms, and men. 
Here was the foreign enemy in active work, and the 
Ameer would look to England for fulfilment of its 



134 MR. GLADSTONE. 

solemn engagement. There was panic on the Stock 
Exchange, consternation at Westminster. A Cabi- 
net Council was hastily summoned and sat up to the 
moment at which public business commenced in 
the House of Commons. Members assembled found the 
Treasury Bench tenantless as far as its chiefs were 
concerned. Sir William Harcourt entered shortly 
after half-past four, but Mr. Gladstone still tarried. 
Sir Stafford Northcote sat in his place on the other 
side of the table, obviously primed with momentous 
questions as to the truth of the rumors that dark- 
ened the air. Sir William Harcourt was on his feet, 
making some observations with obvious intent to 
keep the field open till the Premier should arrive, 
when Mr. Gladstone hurriedly entered. Amid 
breathless silence he stated the facts as far as they 
had reached the Government. He was evidently 
oppressed with the imminence of crisis. A heated 
word might serve as the match to the powder-barrel. 
He contented himself with reading, in a studiously 
matter-of-fact manner, the despatches that had come 
from far-off Afghanistan — those addressed to the 
Government by Sir Peter Lumsden, those communi- 
cated to Lord Granville by the Russian Minister. 

The self-command displayed by the Prime Minister 
gave tone to feeling in the House. The occasion was 
too solemn, the issue too grave for noisy demonstration. 
Mr. Gladstone having made his statement in studiously 
unadorned phrase, the House almost gratefully went 
into Committee of Supply, discussing proposals for new 



THE PENJDEH INCIDENT. 135 

offices for the departments of the Army and the Navy, 
with as little show of emotion as if they had not a few 
minutes earlier almost heard the roll of the drum and 
the blare of the trumpet calling to battle. 

Twelve days later the House was again crowded and 
excited. The Easter Recess was at hand, Parliament 
would be separated for ten days. No one could say 
what would happen in the interval. The Government, 
resolved to be prepared for the worst, asked for a 
vote of credit for not less than eleven and a half 
millions sterling. 

" We have labored," said Mr. Gladstone in solemn 
voice, " and we will continue to labor for an honor- 
able settlement by pacific means. But one thing 
I may venture to say with regard to the sad 
contingency of an outbreak of war, or a rupture 
of relations between two great Powers such as Russia 
and England— one thing I will say with great strength 
of conviction and great earnestness in my endeavor 
to impress it upon the Committee, that we will strive 
to conduct ourselves to the end of this diplomatic 
controversy in such a way as that, if unhappily it is 
to end in violence or rupture, we may at least be able 
to challenge the verdict of civilized mankind, upon a 
review of the demands and refusals, to say whether we 
have or whether we have not done all that men could 
do, by every just and honorable effort, to prevent 
the plunging of two such countries, with all the 
millions that own their sway, into bloodshed and 
strife." 



136 MR. GLADSTONE. 

On the 27th of April the Committee met to deal 
with the final stage of the vote of credit. The Pre- 
mier was at this time suffering from an affection of the 
voice, which seemed to threaten imposition of silence. 
He spoke with difficulty, and with painful hoarseness. 
But as he proceeded to explain the necessity for this 
colossal vote he mastered his infirmity. " What has 
happened ? " he asked, looking round at the faces set in 
serried ranks intently watching. " A bloody engage- 
ment on the 30th of March followed the covenant 
of the 16th. I shall overstate nothing. At least I 
shall not purposely overstate anything. I hope I shall 
not inadvertently overstate anything. All I shall 
say is this — that the woeful engagement on the 
30th of March distinctly showed that one party or 
both had, either through ill-will or unfortunate mis- 
hap, failed to fulfil the conditions of the engagement. 
We considered it to be, and we still consider it to be, 
the duty of both countries, and, above all I will say, 
for the honor of both countries, to examine how and 
by whose fault this calamity came about. I will have 
no foregone conclusion, I will not anticipate that we 
are in the right. Altliough I feel perfect confidence 
in the honor and intelligence of our officers, I will 
not now assume that they may not liave been misled. 
I will prepare myself for the issue ; and I will abide 
by it as far as I can in a spirit of impartiality. But 
what I say is this — that those who have caused such 
an engagement to fail, ought to become known to 
their own Government, and to the other contracting 



THE PENJDEH INCIDENT. 137 

Government. I will not say that we are even now 
in possession of all the facts of the case. But we are 
in possession of many ; and we are in possession of 
facts which create in our minds impressions un- 
favorable to the conduct of some of those who form 
the other party in these negotiations. However, I 
will not wilfully deviate from the strictest principles 
of justice in anticipating anything as to the ultimate 
issue of that fair inquiry which we are desirous of 
prosecuting, and endeavoring to prosecute. The 
cause of that deplorable collision may be uncertain. 
What is certain is that the attack was a Russian attack. 
Whose was the provocation is a matter of the utmost 
consequence. We only know that the attack was a 
Russian attack. We know that the Afghans suffered in 
life, in spirit, and in repute. We know that a blow was 
struck at the credit and the authority of a Sovereign — 
our ally — our protected ally — who had committed no 
offence. All I say is we cannot in that state of things 
close this book and say : ' We will look into it no 
more.' " 

As he spoke the Premier had a blue-book before 
him from which he had been quoting. Suiting the 
action to the word he closed the book and heavily 
smote the cover as he exclaimed, " We will look into 
it no more." Slowly re-opening it he added in low, 
deliberate voice, "We must do our best to have right 
done in the matter." 

A ringing cheer approved this determination. For 
awhile there were neither Liberals nor Conservatives 



138 3IR. GLADSTONE. 

among the Commons. They were all one in patriotic 
feeling, the heat of Mr. Gladstone's noble eloquence 
having welded them into a mass of Englishmen. The 
vote was agreed to without comment other than was 
expressed by a fresh outburst of cheering that had for 
undertone an unusual note of sternness. There was 
no mistaking the attitude of the Government, thus 
backed up by a unanimous Parliament. Business was 
clearly meant. Russia, observing this, climbed down, 
and on the 4th of May Mr. Gladstone was able to 
announce that impediments to friendly correspondence 
with Eussia had been removed, and the two Govern- 
ments had agreed to refer to. the judgment of the 
Sovereign of a friendly State any difference that might 
be found to exist. 

This was tragedy. It was lightened by a touch of 
comedy applied between the two sittings of the 
Committee on the vote of credit. On the 24th of 
April the public, living in a highly strained condition, 
were freshly alarmed by report that the French 
Government, as a preliminary to active hostilities 
with this country, had withdrawn their consul from 
Cairo. Sir Stafford Northcote inquired whether the 
Government were able to confirm this rumor. " No," 
said Mr. Gladstone, with a look of genuine surprise. 
*' We have no information to that effect." 

The House was undisguisedly glad to hear this. 
War with Russia apparently imminent, the prospect 
of France taking up arms was grave indeed. Ques- 
tions had proceeded through their ordinary course, 



THE PENJDEH INCIDENT. 139 

when the crowded House observed Mr. Gladstone in- 
tently reading a note passed along the Treasury Bench 
to his hand. He was evidently perturbed, and after 
a moment's hesitation rose. Since he had replied 
to Sir Stafford Northcote's question, he had, he said, 
received information that a telegram had reached 
London announcing that " the French Charge 
d' Affaires left Cairo this mornino-." The House was 

O 

profoundly moved. A buzz of excited conversation 
filled the Chamber. 

Half an hour later came explanation of the porten- 
tous news. Peremptory instructions had been left 
at the Foreign Office that any telegrams received from 
Cairo should be despatched to the Premier in the 
House of Commons without a moment's delay. One 
coming from Sir Evelyn Baring was, to save time, sent 
off in batches as it arrived. The first message Mr. 
Gladstone received from Cairo ran thus : " This morn- 
ing the French Chargd d'Affaires left." This was the 
news that had clouded his brow and which he had 
made haste to communicate to the House. Ten 
minutes later there was handed to the astonished 
Premier the conclusion of the message — " some 
papers for my consideration." 

This was a happy conclusion of a matter trivial in 
itself, but indicative of the high pressure at which 
Ministers worked at this epoch. 



CHAPTER XY. 

THE IRISH PARTY. 

When the Parliament elected in 1874 met, Mr. Butt, 
chieftain of the then newly designated Home Rule 
party, found himself leader of fifty-nine members. 
The general election of 1880 placed Mr. Parnell in 
the position of Captain of the Home Rule party, now 
mustering sixty-two on a division. The whole condi- 
tion of affairs, as far as the Irish members were con- 
cerned, was altered as compared with the not far 
distant days of Mr. Butt. Mr. Parnell was a general 
of different calibre from the genial, eloquent Q.C. of 
the early days of the Parliament of 1874. Under 
Mr. Parnell's direction organization was complete and 
authority absolute. The Ministerial majority, as has 
been shown, was so overwhelming that even with the 
assistance of the Conservative Opposition Mr. Parnell 
could not make them kick the beam. That was a 
power he was to hold later. 

At the outset Mr. Gladstone had a majority of 56 
over any possible combination between Home Rulers 
and Conservatives. Fresh from their constituencies, 
the Irish members brought pitiful stories of the state 
of things in Ireland. The Land Act of 1870 had 
failed to bring about that era of peace and prosperity 
sanguinely hoped from it. Evictions were of common 



THE IRISH PARTY. 141 

occurrence and were increasing. The year preceding 
the Dissolution they, for the first time in history, 
over-leaped the boundary of a thousand. In 1880 
they exceeded two thousand, and as the life of the 
Parliament extended the number increased. 

In the autumn of 1879 the Irish National Land 
League, a potent factor in subsequent history of the 
Agrarian Question in Ireland, was formed under the 
auspices of Mr. Davitt. In English constituencies 
the Irish vote had at the general election been given 
to Liberal members, and had in some cases undoubt- 
edly swelled the Ministerial ranks. This action was 
taken under Mr. Parnell's direction, not because he 
mistrusted Mr. Gladstone less, but because he hated 
Lord Beaconsfield more. The latter had heralded the 
general election by a letter addressed to the Duke of 
Marlborough, in which he described the Home Rule 
movement as " scarcely less disastrous than pestilence 
and famine," and had called upon "all men of light 
and leading," to assist him in " resisting the policy of 
decomposition supported by the Liberal party, and 
maintain the imperial character of Great Britain." 
The coat being thus ostentatiously trailed, the Irish 
members made haste to jump on it. Lord Beacons- 
field routed, they urged that the undoubted assistance 
they had rendered Mr. Gladstone in pulverizing the 
Conservative majority established a claim for special 
consideration in the programme of the Session. 

The Government made some response by announc- 
ing in the Queen's Speech that the Peace Preserva- 



142 MR. GLADSTONE. 

tion Act would not be renewed. They also promised 
a measure extending the Irish Borough Franchise. 
This was well as far as it went. But it did not go 
far enough for the Irish members, and not at all in 
the particular direction they desired. They wanted 
a new Land Bill, or, failing that, prompt action taken 
to stay the plague of eviction. It was grimly indica- 
tive of the new spirit animating them under Mr. Par- 
nell's leadership that, instead of following immemorial 
usage and crossing the floor of the House when the 
Liberal party, with whom they ostensibly worked on 
lines of general policy, came into office, they remained 
in the seats below the gangway occupied by them 
during the former Parliament. Some of the more 
moderate men, like Mr. Shaw, ad interim Leader 
between Mr. Butt and Mr. Parnell, Mr. Mitchell 
Henry, and Sir Patrick O'Brien, crossed over and sat 
with the Liberals. 

On the Address Mr. O'Connor Power moved an 
amendment demanding that the Irish Land Question 
should forthwith be dealt with. This did not prove 
a very serious movement, as appears from the fact 
that the debate collapsed at eleven o'clock on this its 
first night, only forty-seven members going into the 
division lobby in support of the amendment. 

Things growing worse and worse in Ireland, Mr. 
Forster brought in a Bill authorizing County Court 
Judges, for a limited period, to award compensation 
to tenants evicted for non-payment of rent in cases 
where failure of crops had caused insolvency. The 



THE IRISH PARTY, 143 

Chief Secretary did not acquit himself very well in 
what was undeniably a difficult position. There was 
much wobbling in Committee, Mr. Forster being on 
one side squeezed by the Irish members wanting 
more, and on the other threatened by the Conserva- 
tives with dire consequences if he did not accept 
amendments designed to make the measure inopera- 
tive. Lord Randolph Churchill, much to the fore 
just then, described the measure as having been 
" brought in in a panic for the futile purpose of expe- 
diting Government business by pacifying the Irish 
members." After much trouble and the occupation 
of a measure of time that upset the programme of 
the Session, the Compensation for Disturbance Bill 
was read a third time, and sent up to the House of 
Lords. It reached them on the 3rd of August, and 
was promptly thrown out by a majority of 231. 

This action was received by the Irish members as 
a declaration of open war. Nothing loath, they drew 
the sword, and threw away the scabbard. Mr. John 
Dillon, posting off to Ireland, delivered at Kildare 
a speech Mr. Forster described in the House as 
"wicked and cowardly." Mr. Dillon, returning to 
Westminster, moved the adjournment of the House 
in order to reply to Mr. Forster's attack. This led 
to an animated debate, in which Mr. Forster took 
truculent part. The Irish members had now, to the 
delight of the Conservatives, finally broken with the 
Liberal Government. In what remained of the Ses- 
sion they took every opportunity of attacking Mr. 



144 MR. GLADSTONE. 

Forster's administration. It was in these late Au- 
gust days of the opening Session of the new Parlia- 
ment there was first heard in the House of Commons 
the cry of " Buckshot ! Buckshot ! " angrily directed 
against the Quaker Minister. 

The winter was a black one in Ireland. The class 
of landlords who had swelled the list of evictions, 
finding themselves sustained by the action of the 
Lords, ran them up with freer hand. By the end of 
the year there was record of 2,110 families turned 
out on the roadside. The Land League, growing in 
numbers and in power, held meetings all over the 
country, advising tenants whose rents were fixed 
above Griffiths's valuation, to pay no rent and pas- 
sively resist eviction. Attention was concentrated 
on the case of Captain Boycott, agent of Lord Erne, 
farming a considerable acreage at Lough Mask. He 
having served notices upon some of Lord Erne's ten- 
ants, the countryside, with one consent, agreed it 
would hold no communication with him. None 
would work for him. None would sell him food or 
fetch him water. The Ulster Orangemen responded 
to his cry for help by despatching a body of armed 
men to gather in his imperilled harvest. The un- 
happy Chief Secretary apprehending disturbance when 
the emergency men came within pistol shot of the peas- 
ants of Connemara, hastily despatched a small army 
to keep the peace. A blow was struck in another 
direction, the officials of the Land League being 
indicted for seditious conspiracy. Amongst those 



THE IRISH PARTY. 145 

who stood in the dock on this charge were Mr. 
Parnell, Mr. Dillon, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, Mr. Sexton, 
and Mr. Biggar, all members of the House of Com- 
mons. The jury, as might have been expected, did 
not agree on a verdict, and amid the huzzas of the 
Dublin populace, the prisoners were set free. 

A winter of such discontent was not harbinger of 
peace in the spring. Parliament was summoned to 
meet on the 6th of January, an unusually early date. 
Of two measures in a long list, upon which attention 
was chiefly centred, both related to Ireland. One 
was a new Coercion Bill, the other a Land Bill, a 
nicely balancing arrangement which, with the fatal- 
ity that seemed to dog the steps of the Government, 
succeeded in enraging both sections of the Opposi- 
tion. Mr. Gladstone announced that priority should 
be given to the Coercion measures, which were 
divided into two Bills, one For the Better Protection 
of Persons and Property in Ireland, the other 
Amending the Law relating to the Carrying and 
Possession of Arms. On Monday, the 24th January, 
Mr. Forster introduced the Coercion measure, which 
he studiously called the Protection Bill. On the next 
day Mr. Gladstone moved a resolution giving priority 
to the Bill till it should have passed all its stages. 
'The resolution was carried by 251 votes against 33, 
a conclusion arrived at only at the close of a sitting 
that had lasted uninterruptedly for twenty-two hours, 
in the course of which Mr. Biggar succeeded in getting 
himself suspended under the new rules of procedure. 

10 



CHAPTER XYL 

SUSPENSION OF THIRTY-SEVEN MEMBERS. 

This was the beginning of some memorable scenes. 
Day by day through the week the Government, sup- 
ported by the Conservative Opposition, slowly pressed 
through the motion for leave to introduce the Coer- 
cion Bill; the Irish members dashing themselves 
with wild fury against the rare alliance of forces. On 
Monday, the 31st of January, the Parnellites, invig- 
orated by a couple of days' recess, returned to the 
fight with renewed energy. At that time, the clos- 
ure not having been adopted, they were, within cer- 
tain limits, masters of the situation. Their plan of 
campaign was to move an amendment, upon which 
the thirty-six members faithful to Mr. Parnell should 
in succession make speeches, each holding forth as 
long as physical energy and flux of words enabled 
him. When each had had his say, and the conspir- 
acy of silence on the Ministerial benches had been bro- 
ken by a Minister uttering the fewest possible words 
by way of reply, the House divided. Immediately 
afterwards an Irishman moved the adjournment of 
the debate, and the whole thing went forward again. 
It was evident that this was a case in which the 
battle would be to the strong. It was simply a 
matter of physical endurance. The Parnellites 



SUSPENSION OF THIRTY-SEVEN MEMBERS. 147 

divided themselves into watches, after the fashion of 
a ship's crew. Whilst some slept others remained 
at their posts, keeping the thing going. Hour 
followed hour, night day, and day night. On Tues- 
day afternoon, the House having been in session unin- 
terruptedly for twenty-four hours. Lord Beaconsfield 
paid a rare visit to the scene. Looking down from 
the Peers' Gallery on the wearied face of Mr. Glad- 
stone, seated on the Treasury Bench, he, with new 
application of his historical phrase, doubtless thanked 
Heaven there was a House of Lords. 

The necessity of working in shifts was also en- 
forced upon the Chair, the Speaker and Mr. Lyon 
Playfair, then Chairman of Committees, taking turn 
and turn about. Mr. Bright bore his share of the 
burden on the Treasury Bench, speaking more than 
once with a bitterness that galled to the quick Irish- 
men who had, in other times, learned to look upon 
him as their country's champion. All through 
Tuesday night the hurly-burly continued. At nine 
o'clock on Wednesday morning the wearied House 
quickened with swift apprehension that a crisis was 
at hand. Mr. Gladstone had just arrived, looking 
pale and stern. Rapidly the Treasury Bench filled 
up. There was an ominous muster on the Front 
Opposition Bench of right honorable gentlemen who, 
throughout the prolonged scene, had been insistent 
upon action being taken to restore the dignity of the 
House. Mr. Lyon Playfair was in the Chair, which 
he had occupied all the night. Towards six o'clock 



148 MR. GLADSTONE. 

in the morning, Mr. Biggar, who had passed his 
" watch below " on a couple of chairs in the library, 
reappeared and cheerily informed the House that he 
" had had a good sleep and came back like a giant 
refreshed. " At nine o'clock the member for Cavan 
was again on his feet, saying nothing at interminable 
length. His remarks were broken in upon by a sud- 
den, swift, triumphant cheer. Looking up, Mr. 
Biggar saw the Speaker in wig and gown making 
stately progress to the chair. 

Mr. Lyon Playfair vacated the seat and the Speaker, 
with stern cry of " Order ! Order ! " motioned Mr. 
Biggar to resume his seat, an order which that 
gentleman, in a moment of weakness begotten of 
surprise, obeyed. The Speaker, reading from a 
manuscript held in a hand that visibly shook with 
emotion, observed that the proposal to bring in the 
Protection Bill had been under discussion for five 
days, the opposition throughout that time being 
purely obstructive. Under existing rules the Chair 
was impotent to withstand these tactics. The 
Speaker had therefore resolved to take upon himself 
the responsibility of ending the conflict by declining 
to call upon any member who might present himself 
with intention of continuing the discussion, and 
would forthwith put the question. 

This announcement was received with tumultuous 
cheering, which drowned the shrill protest of the 
Irish members. It was an amendment moved by 
Dr. Lyons that chanced at the time to be under dis- 



SUSPENSION OF THIRTY-SEVEN MEMBERS. 149 

cussion. On a division it was negatived by 164 to 
19, the minority representing "the watch on deck" 
of the Parnellites, the captain himself chancing at 
this time to be in his berth. The Speaker next put 
the main question, that leave be given to bring in 
the Bill. Mr. Justin McCarthy rose to reopen debate 
on this new issue. The Speaker, rising at the same 
time, met the interposition with the cry of " Order ! 
Order ! " and proceeded to put the question. Where- 
upon the Irish members, rising to their feet, shouted 
" Privilege ! Privilege ! " and, bowing with ceremo- 
nious respect to the Chair, left the House. The 
Chamber still echoing with their new battle-cry, Mr. 
Forster promptly brought in the Bill, which was 
read a second time, and the House adjourned, after 
having sat continuously for forty-one hours. 

It being Wednesday, the Standing Orders, disre- 
garding the unexampled events of the week, necessi- 
tated a fresh sitting at noon. The Speaker was 
punctually in his place, the House densely crowded. 
Mr. Parnell on entering was wildly cheered by the 
full force of his party. He proposed to move a reso- 
lution declaring that Mr. Speaker, in peremptorily 
closing debate, had committed a breach of the privi- 
leges of the House. The Speaker pointed out that 
the question not being one of privilege, but one of 
order, might be submitted only in the usual way 
after due notice. The wrangle continued till the 
hour was reached when, happily, on Wednesdays, 
debate automatically stands adjourned. 



150 MR. GLADSTONE. % 

On the next day the storm raged with even wilder 
force. News had reached Westminster that at one 
o'clock Mr. Davitt had been arrested. The business 
of the day as proposed by Ministers was a motion by 
the Prime Minister, giving precedence to the Pro- 
tection Bill on the ground of urgency. The Par- 
nellites, masters of Parliamentary strategy, were 
determined to make the most of what period of com- 
parative impunity was left to them. Mr. Gladstone, 
in obedience to a call from the Speaker, had risen to 
move his resolution. He had not proceeded through 
many sentences when Mr. Dillon, from his place 
below the gangway, began to speak. He was met by 
an outburst of stormy cries of " Order ! Order ! " The 
Speaker was on his feet motioning him to sit down. 
Mr. Dillon folding his arms, stood silent, motion- 
less, defiant. So he stood whilst the Speaker " named 
him " as being guilty of wilful and persistent obstruc- 
tion. Mr. Gladstone moved the consequent motion 
"that Mr. Dillon be suspended from the service of 
the House." A division was challenged, 33 oppos- 
ing the motion, 395 trooping out into the other lobby 
in support of Law and Order. 

Then followed a scene unprecedented even in these 
strange times. The Speaker, having repeated the 
figures of the division, called upon Mr. Dillon to 
withdraw. "I respectfully decline to withdraw," 
said Mr. Dillon. The injunction being repeated, 
and the defiance renewed, the Speaker called upon 
the Sergeant-at-Arms to remove the hon. member. 



SUSPENSION OF THIRTY-SEVEN MEMBERS. 151 

The Sergeant-at-Arms advanced to the corner of the 
bench on which Mr. Dillon was seated and awaited 
his surrender. Mr. f)illon did not budge. At a sign 
from the Sergeant-at-Arms, four of the white-cra- 
vatted, gold-chained, elderly, respectable gentlemen 
who serve as messengers in the House of Commons 
marched up shoulder to shoulder. Physically it was 
not an imposing demonstration of force. As was 
observed at the time, in echo of occasional obituary 
notices in The Times, "their united ages would have 
amounted to two hundred and sixty years. " But at 
sight of them Mr. Dillon at once surrendered, and 
amid cheers from the Ministerialists, and cries of 
" Shame ! " " Cowards I " from the Parnellites, he 
withdrew. 

Again Mr. Gladstone attempted to continue his 
speech. The O'Donoghue, at this period of his 
varied career ranking as a Parnellite, moved the 
adjournment of the debate. The Speaker ruled that 
Mr. Gladstone was in possession of the House. "I 
move," shouted Mr. Parnell, "that the right hon. 
gentleman be not heard. " The Speaker warned Mr. 
Parnell that his conduct was obstructive, and if per- 
sisted in, notice must be taken of it. Mr. Parnell, 
white with passion, rose again and insisted upon 
being heard. "I name Mr. Parnell as disregarding 
the authority of the Chair," said the Speaker. 

The piece of paper on which the terms of the 
motion for suspension had been written out was 
hastily passed up to the Premier, who moved 



152 MR. GLADSTONE. 

Mr. Parnell's suspension. A division being chal- 
lenged, the usual order to clear the House was given. 
The Parnellites had a fresh surp^rise in store for out- 
raged authority. They declined to leave their places, 
remaining seated whilst 405 members crowded the 
" Aye " lobby, seven members going the other way. 
The Speaker declaring " the Ayes have it " called 
upon Mr. Parnell to withdraw. Mr. Parnell, not 
less respectfully than Mr. Dillon, refused to obey. 
The Sergeant-at-Arms again appeared with summons 
to retire. The Irish Leader was not to be removed 
with anything less in the way of overpowering de- 
monstration than had been forthcoming in the case 
of his lieutenant. Accordingly once more the four 
elderly messengers were mustered and marched up 
the House, indomitable, irresistible. At sight of 
them Mr. ParnelPs scruples vanished, and he quietly 
left the House. 

After this what followed partook of the character 
of anti-climax. The full muster of Parnellites was 
thirty-seven. One by one in succession they revolted 
against the authority of the Chair, were suspended, 
and marched forth. Some insisted on the full pan- 
oply of the four messengers. Others, more consid- 
erate, sparing the officials addition to physical labor 
which, in the case of the two seniors, had evidently 
begun to tell, were content to follow the unsupported 
bidding of the Sergeant-at-Arms. After the first 
two hours the process began to pall on the jaded 
palate. But there still remained an hour and a half 



SUSPENSION OF THIRTY-SEVEN MEMBERS. 153 

before the glass doors had closed on the last of the 
recalcitrants. 

Order now reigning in Warsaw, Mr. Gladstone 
succeeded in the accomplishment of his often-inter- 
rupted task. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

RESIGNATION OF MR. FORSTER. 

In the following Session (1882), the relations of the 
Government with Ireland and the Irish members 
reached even an acuter phase. The Land Bill, passed 
by Herculean efforts, in which Mr. Gladstone had 
personally borne the lion's share, failed to pacify 
Ireland. The National Land League was in active 
force. Shortly after the prorogation, a Land League 
Convention held in Dublin was attended by 1,300 
delegates, trooping in from all parts of Ireland. 
The Convention was followed by meetings held in 
every town and village, at which, amongst other 
things, the abolition of landlordism was accepted as 
a main plank in the National programme. "No 
Rent," was the watchword throughout the land. 
Boycotting was a common process, and stories of 
personal outrage filled the papers. Ireland was in a 
state of open revolt against the authority of the law. 
Speaking at Leeds on the 7th October, 1881, Mr. 
Gladstone uttered an ominous warning. "I have," 
he said, "not lost confidence in the people of Ire- 
land. The progress they have made in many points 
is to me a proof that we ought to rely upon them. 
But they have dangers and temptations and seduc- 
tions offered to them such as never were before pre- 



RESIGNATION OF MR. FORSTER. 155 

sented to a people, and the trial of their virtue is 
severe. Nevertheless, they will have to go through 
that trial; we have endeavored to pay them the debt 
of justice, and of liberal justice. We have no reason 
to believe they do not acknowledge it. We wish 
they may have the courage to acknowledge it man- 
fully and openly, and to repudiate, as they ought to 
repudiate, the evil counsels with which it is sought 
to seduce them from the path of duty and of right, 
as well as of public law and of public order. We 
are convinced that the Irish nation desires to take 
free and full advantage of the Land Act. But Mr. 
Parnell says : ' No, you must wait until I have sub- 
mitted cases ; until I tell you whether the court that 
Parliament has established can be trusted. ' Trusted 
for what ? Trusted to reduce what he says is seven- 
teen millions a year of property, to the three mil- 
lions which he graciously allows. And when he 
finds it is not to be trusted for that — and I hope in 
God it is not to be trusted for any such purpose — 
then he will endeavor to work his will by attempting 
to procure for the Irish people the repeal of the Act. 
But in the mean time what says he ? That until he 
has submitted his test cases any farmer who pays his 
rent is a fool — a dangerous denunciation in Ireland, 
a dangerous thing to be denounced as a fool by a 
man who has made himself the head of the most 
violent party in Ireland, and who has offered the 
greatest temptations to the Irish people. That is no 
small matter. He desires to arrest the operation of 



156 MR. GLADSTONE. 

the Act, to stand as Aaron stood, between the living 
and the dead ; but to stand there, not as Aaron stood, 
to arrest, but to spread the plague. 

" These opinions are called forth by the grave state 
of the facts. I do not give them to you as anything 
more, but they are opinions sustained by reference 
to words and to actions. They all have regard to 
this great impending crisis in which we depend upon 
the good sense of the people, and in which we are 
determined that no force, and no fear of force, and 
no fear of ruin through force, shall, so far as we are 
concerned, and as it is in our power to decide the 
question, prevent the Irish people from having the 
full and free benefit of the Land Act. But if, when 
we have that short further experience to which I 
have referred, it shall then appear that there is still 
to be fought a final conflict in Ireland, between law 
on the one side and sheer lawlessness on the other; 
if the law, purged from defect and from any taint of 
injustice, is still to be repelled and refused, and the 
first conditions of political society are to be set at 
nought, then I say without hesitation the resources 
of civilization against its enemies are not yet ex- 
hausted. I shall recognize in full, when the facts 
are ripe — and their ripeness is approaching — the 
duty and the responsibility of the Government. I 
call upon all orders and degrees of men, not in these 
two kingdoms, but in these three, to support the 
Government in the discharge of its duty and in acquit- 
ting itself of that responsibility. I, for one, in that 



RESIGNATION OF MR. FORSTER. 157 

state of facts, relying upon my fellow-countrymen in 
these three nations associated together, have not a 
doubt of the result." 

Mr. Parnell replied at Wexford in a defiant speech, 
in which he characterized Mr. Gladstone's remarks 
as "unscrupulous and dishonest." The Irish people, 
he declared, would not rest or relax their efforts till 
they had regained their lost legislative independence. 

Swift on these two speeches fell a heavy blow. On 
the 13th of October Mr. Parnell was arrested in 
Dublin, and carried off to Kilmainham. Mr. John 
Dillon, Mr. Sexton, and Mr. O'Kelly, members of 
Parliament, were also lodged in Kilmainham with the 
chief officials of the League. Mr. Egan, the Treas- 
urer of the League, fled to' Paris. Mr. Biggar and 
other Irish members escaped the fate of their col- 
leagues by keeping out of Ireland. 

When the House of Commons met for the Session 
of 1882, the Irish Leader and some of his principal 
lieutenants were still in Kilmainham. Coercion was 
in full swing. In April it was stated in the House 
of Commons that Mr. Forster had under lock and 
key not less than 600 persons, imprisoned under the 
Coercion Acts. Ireland, its rights and its wrongs, 
blazed up fiercely night after night. In the Lords 
a motion made by Lord Donoughmore for a Select 
Committee to inquire into the working of the Irish 
Land Act was carried, twelve Liberal Peers voting 
against Mr. Gladstone's policy, a matter at that time 
thought worthy of notice. This attempt to go back 



158 MR. GLADSTONE. 

upon legislation passed only in the previous Session 
roused Mr. Gladstone to mighty anger. He met the 
action of the Lords with a defiant resolution, debated 
through four stormy nights, and carried by 303 votes 
to 235, figures that indicate the Government were still 
in possession of a stout majority. 

By the end of April matters had apparently 
reached a dead-lock. After a pause there followed 
what Lord Salisbury described as '' prodigies ap- 
pearing in the political sky." It was rumored that 
Lord Cowper, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had 
resigned. If that were true, how did Mr. Forster 
stand ? Evidently some portentous movement was 
going forward within the recesses of the Cabinet. 
Mr. Chamberlain was unusually active. He was to be 
found on the terrace of the Houses of Parliament, in 
the corridors, in the reading-rooms, in earnest collo- 
quy with Irish members who through the Session had 
distinguished themselves by the violence of their 
denunciation of the Government. Here is a note 
made in the House of Commons on the 28th of April, 
written without knowledge of the crisis at the 
moment about to burst. It may be interesting as 
giving a transient view of the situation as observed 
by an eye-witness at the moment unaware of its true 
inwardness : — 

" Of the two score questions on tlie paper this afternoon more 
than half were put by Irish members, and were addressed to the 
Chief Secretary. It is part of the organized campaign of the 
Land League members to worry Mr. Forster with questions. 



RESIGNATION OF MR. FORSTER. 159 

Many relate to trivial matters ; all present a great superstructure 
of exaggeration built upon an insignificant substratum of fact. 
Mr. Forster is, unfortunately, deficient in qualities that would 
make it possible for a Minister to meet tactics like these. The 
baiting of the Chief Secretary in the House of Commons by the 
Irish members is the nearest approach permitted by public opinion 
in this country to the bull fights in Madrid. There is the same 
agonized blundering here and there by the object of attack, the 
same perfect command of the situation by the Parliamentary 
banderillos and picadors. Sometimes Mr. Forster, reaching the 
limits of human patience, breaks out in righteous wrath and 
gores his assailants. Whereupon the Land Leaguers indignantly 
denounce him, and plaintively appeal to the Speaker to protect 
them. Oftener, as happened to-night, he affects indifference, 
and, like much else that he does in connection with Ireland, 
does it very badly. He had brought down in his despatch-box 
a bundle of sheets of foolscap, on each a question pasted on 
the top, and the conscientious answer laboriously written 
beneath. One by one as the questions were put he read his 
answers. The slightest admission of a substratum of fact was 
greeted with triumphant yells by the Land Leaguers ; whilst 
any attempt to topple over the superstructure of fable or ex- 
aggeration was baffled by rude interruption. Since the Speaker 
did not interfere it must be taken for granted that this demon- 
stration did not go beyond the bounds of Parliamentary decorum. 
It certainly exceeded all notion of fair play, not to mention 
the canons of commonest courtesy. 

"Not the least significant feature in the incident was the 
solitariness that surrounded the struggling Minister. Not a cry 
from the Liberal Benches cheered him in his difficulty. Not one 
of his colleagues rose to ask the Speaker whether this constant 
interruption, these snarling cries, this insolent laughter, formed 
a breach of Parliamentary order. With his head down and his 
shoulders squared, Mr. Forster faced again and again the little 
mob below the gangway opposite, who gloated over his personal 
discomfort and his political discomfiture. This must be one of 
the hardest things for Mr. Forster to bear in his present season 
of tribulation. As compared with Jonah, his treatment by those 
who sail in the same ship with him is exceedingly hard. Jonah, 
up to the very moment when he was handed over the gunwale, 



160 MR. GLADSTONE. 

was courteously treated. His convenience was consulted in 
every way, and even when, having had put to him the question 
what should be done, he answered, ' Take me up and cast me 
forth into the sea,' his shipmates gallantly bent again to the 
oars, determined that, if this thing must come, it should not be 
till all else had failed. 

" There is nothing of this in the attitude of Mr. Forster's ship- 
mates. And yet he has been but the instrument of the policy 
framed in the Cabinet and adopted by overwhelming majorities 
by the Liberal party in the House of Commons. This open 
desertion of a comrade has a more disastrous effect upon the 
morale of the House of Commons than anything else that could 
be done. It was one of the characteristics that endeared Lord 
Palmerston to the nation that he stuck to a colleague, whether he 
was right or wrong. Whichever be the case with Mr. Forster, 
he has done right or wrong in company with his colleagues and 
his party, and when the House of Commons has presented to it 
a spectacle such as that witnessed between five and six o'clock 
to-night, it is no wonder it should develop the characteristics 
that just now distinguish it. What the House of Commons likes to 
feel is the light guidance of a strong hand, or at least the con- 
sciousness that it is being led in some particular direction to 
some well understood goal. At present it has not even a reliable 
finger-post, and amid the gathering discontent and disgust, 
respectability and repute retire into the background, and Mr. 
Callan comes to the fore." 

Four days later, on the 2nd of May, Mr. Gladstone 
made a statement which filled the House with amaze- 
ment. Earl Cowper had resigned, and so had Mr. 
Forster. Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. O'Kellj 
had been released from Kilmainham. The Govern- 
ment, he added, intended to bring in a measure deal- 
ing with the arrears of rent, and the Bright Clauses 
of the Land Act. They did not intend to renew the 
Coercion Act, but would forthwith bring in a Bill to 
strengthen the ordinary law. 



RESIGNATION OF MR. FORSTER. 161 

This fusillade of startling announcements was made 
in a House crowded in every part. Something of 
dramatic interest was lost, owing to the fact that in 
the House of Lords, meeting an hour earlier. Lord 
Granville had forestalled the statement. But the real 
interest centred in the House of Commons ; and the 
Lords, having wound up their hasty sitting, flocked 
over to the Commons, the Marquis of Salisbury 
paying one of his rare visits to the Peers' Gallery, 
where the Duke of Cambridge sat embedded in an 
accumulation of excited peerage. The Irish members 
received in ominous silence the announcement of the 
release of their comrades, whilst the Conservative 
Opposition, suddenly taking Mr. Forster into their 
favor, stridently cheered Mr. Gladstone's announce- 
ment that his resignation was based on the ground 
that " he declined to share our responsibility." 

Mr. Forster's statement made on the following day 
led to fresh developments. He spoke with unusual 
bitterness, the Opposition boisterously cheering when 
from the corner seat behind the Treasury Bench, he, 
looking down on his old colleagues, besought them 
not to rest upon any secret understanding with the 
Land Leaguers, or to try and bribe them by con- 
cessions into obedience to the law. " Let there be 
no payment of blackmail to lawbreakers." Mr. Glad- 
stone sprang up to reply. " There has," he protested, 
"been no arrangement, no bargain, no negotiation. 
Nothing has been asked, and nothing has been 
taken." Mr. Parnell, re-entering the House for the 

11 



162 MR. GLADSTONE. 

first time in the Session, took the opportunity of 
making a statement, listened to with strained atten- 
tion. The question of the release of himself and his 
friends had not, he declared, entered into any com- 
munication he had made of his views of the state 
of affairs in Ireland. What he had done was to set 
forth in writing his belief that a settlement of the 
arrears question would have an enormous effect in 
restoring law and order in Ireland. It would take 
away the last excuse for outrages, and would leave 
him and his friends free to take steps that might have 
a desirable effect in diminishing them. Mr. Dillon 
even more warmly protested that he had held no com- 
munication directly or indirectly with Ministers. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE KILMAINHAM TREATY. 

It was generally expected that Mr. Chamberlain would 
succeed Mr. Forster in the Chief Secretaryship. Per- 
sonal relations recently established with the Irish 
members induced them to regard such an appoint- 
ment with favor. Had Mr. Gladstone yielded on 
this point the political history of the next three years 
would have been materially different from what actu- 
ally befell. Ignoring Mr. Chamberlain's aspirations 
and claims, the Premier nominated to the difficult post 
Lord Frederick Cavendish, promoted from a sub- 
ordinate place in the Ministry. 

On Saturday morning, the 6th of May, Lord 
Frederick arrived in Dublin to assume his new 
duties. Late that evening the Marquis of Harting- 
ton, present at a party given at the Admiralty to 
meet the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, was taken 
aside by a colleague in the Cabinet and told that 
his brother had been murdered. Walking to the 
Viceregal Lodge in company with Mr. Burke, after 
taking part in the State entry of the new Viceroy, 
Earl Spencer, Lord Frederick was fallen upon by 
a gang of men and stabbed in the chest. It was a 
fair summer evening, so light that Lord Spencer, 
standing at the window of the Viceregal Lodge, saw 



164 MR. GLADSTONE. 

what he afterwards knew to have been the death- 
struggle. Some boys on bicycles, passing down the 
broad highway, saw the two gentlemen walking and 
talking together. Returning after a spin, they found 
them lying side by side on the pathway, Mr. Burke 
stabbed to the heart, Lord Frederick with a knife 
through his right lung. 

This outrage upon the person of an inoffensive man, 
who had gone over to Ireland carrying the olive- 
leaf of peace, created a profound sensation. Mr. 
Parnell took the earliest opportunity of expressing in 
the House of Commons, on the part of his friends and 
himself, and, he believed, on the part of every Irish- 
man throughout the world, his detestation of the 
horrible crime committed. Some years later Mr. 
Gladstone incidentally mentioned that the Irish leader 
had privately written to him, offering, if he thought 
it would be useful, to retire from public life. In the 
temper of the House and the country there was no 
difficulty in hurrying through Parliament a fresh and 
more stringent Coercion Bill. 

A fortnight after the Phoenix Park tragedy, the 
Irish question flamed up again around what came to 
be known as the Kilmainham Treaty. Partly from 
observations dropped by Mr. Forster, partly from 
other sources, the Opposition had come to the con- 
clusion that the release of Mr. Parnell and his col- 
leagues from Kilmainham was the price paid for 
assurance of changed attitude on the part of the 
Irish members towards the Government. Night after 



THE KILMAINHAM TREATY. 165 

night the subject was returned to, and Ministers bom- 
barded with questions. On the 15th of May, in the course 
of one of these processes of interrogation, Mr. Parnell 
read a letter written by him on the eve of his release 
from Kilmainham. It set forth a certain policy which, 
adopted, would, in Mr. Parnell's opinion, lead to the 
pacification of Ireland. The concluding passage, as 
read by Mr. Parnell, ran thus : " The accomplisliment 
of the programme I have sketched out to you would, 
in my judgment, be regarded by the country as a 
practical settlement of the land question, and I be- 
lieve that the Government at the end of this Session 
would, from the state of the country, feel themselves 
thoroughly justified in dispensing with further coer- 
cive measures." 

Mr. Forster sat in the corner seat above the 
gangway, which is the haven of Ministers who have 
cut themselves adrift from their colleagues. He 
listened attentively to the passages as read by Mr. 
Parnell. When he concluded Mr. Forster interposed, 
and asked whether the whole of the letter had been 
read ? Mr. Parnell said he had read the whole of 
the copy as supplied to him by Captain O'Shea. 
Captain O'Shea, who, though at this time on terms 
of personal intimacy with Mr. Parnell, and later 
disclosed as the emissary between Mr. Chamberlain 
and the captive Irish Leader in the preliminaries 
of the Kilmainham Treaty, usually sat with the 
Ministerialists. He was thus within reach of Mr. 
Forster, who, amid a scene of growing excitement, 



166 MR. GLADSTONE, 

handed to him a document, and asked him to read 
the last paragraph. Captain O'Shea showed some 
unwillingness, and there was a bandying of the paper 
to and fro between the front bench below the gang- 
way and the shaggy statesman in the corner seat. 
Eventually Captain O'Shea read the paper handed to 
him by Mr. Forster. It proved to be a copy of Mr. 
Parnell's letter, dated from Kilmainham 28th of April, 
1882, addressed to Captain O'Shea. In it appeared a 
clause affirming that the settlement of the Land Qucst 
tion alluded to " would, I feel sure, enable us to co- 
operate cordially for the future with the Liberal party 
in forwarding Liberal principles." 

By whose authority, or at whose instigation this 
important passage in the letter had been omitted 
from the copy prepared for Mr. Parnell's reading, is 
partly explained by Mr. Chamberlain. In the course 
of recurrent conversation on the subject Mr. Cham- 
berlain said that Captain O'Shea, in privately com- 
municating Mr. Parnell's letter to him, had asked 
leave to withdraw the sentence omitted from the letter 
read by Mr. Parnell. The incident had, he assured 
the scoffing Conservatives, made so little impression 
on his mind that when the letter was read by Mr. 
Parnell he had not noticed the omission was made. 
That the letter in its complete form came before the 
Cabinet, and was discussed by them with the subse- 
quently omitted sentence forming part of the text, 
appears from the fact that the document handed 
by Mr. Forster to Captain O'Shea was the identical 



THE KILMAINHAM TREATY. 167 

one circulated among members of the Cabinet for 
their information. It was one of the bitter re- 
proaches of the controversy that Mr. Forster, in 
handing about the scrap of paper, had betrayed the 
confidence of the Cabinet. However it came about, 
by whomsoever inspired, the omission of the sentence 
was a petty machination that invested the whole pro- 
ceeding with an underground air of mystery distaste- 
ful to the House of Commons, and most harmful to the 
Ministry. 

The Government had started, after the fashion of 
all Ministries under the leadership of Mr. Gladstone, 
with a comprehensive programme of work. But, as 
will be seen, things were already getting into a 
hopeless muddle in the House of Commons, and 
sober legislation went to the wall. The new Coer- 
cion Act and an Arrears Bill, the latter much mauled 
by the House of Lords, were the only important 
measures of a prolonged Session. On the twentieth 
night in Committee on the Coercion Bill twenty-five 
Irish members were suspended. In mid-July there 
came an echo of the bombardment of Alexandria in 
the resignation of Mr. Bright, who returned to his 
old place at the corner of the second bench below the 
gangway, the breadth of which passage separated him 
from his old colleague, Mr. Forster. Prorogued on 
the 18th of August, Parliament met again on the 
24tli of October, and engaged upon the New Rules of 
Procedure, by which it was hoped obstruction might 
be scotched. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

GATHERING CLOUDS. 

The Session of 1883 was, by comparison with its 
stormy predecessors, uneventful. Government ap- 
proached it with large arrears of work, which they 
hoped to ease off by the help of the New Rules of 
Procedure and the establishment of Grand Commit- 
tees. That three weeks were occupied with debate 
on the Address showed that the Closure was not such 
a useful instrument as had been anticipated. An 
attempt to pass a Parliamentary Oaths Bill aroused 
much angry passion, occupied considerable time, and 
was thrown out by a majority of three in a House of 
581 members. The main results of this fourth Ses- 
sion of the harried Parliament was the passing of 
Agricultural Holdings Bills for England and Scot- 
land, the Bankruptcy Bill, the Corrupt Practices 
Bill, and a Bill dealing with Patents. 

In the Session of 1884 Egypt reappeared on the 
scene, and was made much of by an active Opposi- 
tion, inspired by signs of growing weariness on the 
Treasury Bench. Two votes of censure were brought 
forward in rapid succession, the Government major- 
ity on the second dropping to twenty-eight. The 
great achievement of the Session, sufficient to make 



GATHERING CLOUDS. 169 

it memorable, was the passing of a new Reform Bill, 
of which Mr. Gladstone, ever greedy for work, took 
personal direction. In this battle, as often happened 
with Mr. Gladstone, his most potent enemies were 
those of his own household. The Conservatives, hav- 
ing done enough for the extension of the franchise 
under Mr. Disraeli's leadership in 1867, naturally 
objected to further action in that direction. That 
was an attitude to be expected, and might be suc- 
cessfully dealt with. What the Ministry had most 
to fear was the impatience of able members in their 
own ranks, whose implacable principle and stern 
sense of duty would impel them to wreck a great and 
beneficent measure if on some matter of detail it 
was not brought into absolute agreement with their 
personal view. 

It was to this section of his following that Mr. 
Gladstone turned and addressed the closing sen- 
tences of the speech in which, on the 28th of Febru- 
ary, he introduced the Franchise Bill. "I hope," he 
said, "the House will look at this measure as the 
Liberal party in 1831 looked at the Reform Bill of 
that date and determined that they would waive crit- 
icism of minute details, that they would waive par- 
ticular preferences and predilections, and would look 
at the broad scope and general effect of the measure. 
Do that upon this occasion. It is a Bill worth hav- 
ing, and if it is worth having, again I say it is a 
Bill worth your not endangering. Let us enter into 
no by-ways which would lead us off the path marked 



ITO MR. GLADSTONE. 

out straight before us. Let us not wander on the 
hilltops of speculation. Let us not wander into the 
morasses and fogs of doubt. We are firm in the 
faith that enfranchisement is good, that the people 
may be trusted, that the voters under the Constitu- 
tion are the strength of the Constitution. What we 
want in order to carry this Bill, considering, as I 
fully believe, that the very large majority of this 
country are favorable to its principles — what we 
want in order to carry it is union, and union only. 
What will endanger it is disunion, and disunion 
only. Let us hold firmly together, and success will 
crown our effort. You will, as much as any former 
Parliament that has conferred great legislative bene- 
fits on the nation, have your reward, and 
' Read your history in a nation's eyes.' 

You will have deserved it by the benefits you will 
have conferred. You will have made this strong 
nation stronger still, stronger by its closer union 
without ; stronger within by union between class and 
class, and by arranging all classes and all portions 
of the community in one solid compact mass round 
the ancient throne which it has loved so well, and 
round a Constitution now to be more than ever 
powerful and more than ever free." 

The progress of the Bill was delayed by votes of 
censure and miscellaneous discussions around Supply. 
When it reached the Lords, objection taken by Con- 
servatives in the Commons to dealing with the ex- 
tension of the franchise unless accompanied by a 



GATHERING CLOUDS. l-^l 

scheme of redistribution was renewed. A hostile 
amendment based on this objection was carried by 
205 votes against 146. An autumn Session was 
arranged specially to deal with redistribution. The 
House met on the 23rd of October, the Franchise 
Bill being forthwith introduced. ConciUation was 
in the air, and presently took the happy but un- 
usual form of a sort of joint Committee of Leaders 
of parties. Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford North- 
cote, walking over to Downing Street, sat down 
with Mr. Gladstone, Lord Hartington, and Sir Charles 
Dilke, and in a couple of hours had come to an un- 
derstanding whereby the Franchise Bill passed through 
the Lords. After a Christmas vacation, the House, 
reassembling on the 19th of February, 1885, set 
itself to work in committee upon a Redistribution 
Bill, which received the Royal Assent on the 25th 

of June. 

Thus was a great work practically accomplished. 
But it was evident that the Government's mandate 
was exhausted and their strength failing. For 
the amount of labor cast upon Ministers, the Par- 
liament of 1880-5 certainly beats the record. All- 
night sittings were a matter of frequent occurrence. 
The order of business was constantly interrupted 
by motions for the adjournment and pitched battles 
upon votes of censure. The question hour came to 
be an instrument of prolonged torture. The House 
meeting for public business at half-past four, the 
Orders of the Day were rarely entered upon before 



172 AIR. GLADSTONE. 

six o'clock. On one occasion (in June, 1880) the 
House of Commons found itself at one o'clock in the 
morning engaged with questions, the list having 
been opened at half -past four in the afternoon. In 
the mean while Mr. O'Donnell had carried out his 
attack upon M. Challemel-Lacour, recently appointed 
French Minister at this Court. 

For comparatively young men on the Treasury 
Bench the physical ordeal was trying. Mr. Glad- 
stone, with his threescore years and ten upon his 
back, bore more than his full burden of the day's 
work. He was in his place early and late, his so- 
called " dinner hour " sometimes not exceeding thirty 
minutes. It was no uncommon thing to find him at 
his post between two and three in the morning after 
a turbulent night. Towards the close of the Session 
of 1880 he broke down. The illness, which took the 
form of fever with congestion of the lung, was serious 
enough to profoundly alarm the nation. Downing 
Street was crowded with anxious callers. But he 
pulled through, and after a trip round the coast in 
the G-rantully Castle^ he returned to the House, and 
received from both sides an ovation which for the 
moment stilled party acrimony. In the next Session 
he appeared for a while wearing a black skull-cap 
covering the marks of a nasty accident that befell 
him in stepping out of his carriage on a dark night. 
But nothing daunted his energy, the only signs of 
physical weakness and mental weariness being occa- 
sional outbursts of anger when affronted by such 



GATHERING CLOUDS. 173 

persons as Mr. Warton, or threatened by some irre- 
pressible follower below the gangway. 

In May, 1885, affairs were evidently approaching 
a crisis. Soon after Parliament had reassembled, 
votes of censure on the Government were impartially 
moved from the regular Opposition and by a distin- 
guished Liberal. Sir Stafford Northcote censured 
the Government for their policy in the Soudan. 
After an exciting division it appeared that the Gov- 
ernment majority had been reduced to 14. Mr. 
John Morley's vote of censure protested against the 
employment of forces of the Crown for the overthrow 
of the power of the Mahdi. The Conservatives rally- 
ing with Ministers on this issue, the amendment was 
negatived by a rattling majority. But of the 112 
who went into the lobby with Mr. Morley, the major- 
ity were habitual supporters of the Government. 
In addition to these troubles at home, there was the 
peril of the Penjdeh incident, described in an earlier 
chapter. A vote of credit for eleven millions had 
been passed. The extreme course of calling out the 
reserves had been approved. The air was full of 
electricity. At any moment the country might be 
engaged in a Titanic war. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE STORM BURSTS. 

Nearer than from the Radical camp below the gang- 
way was heard the voice of candid friends remonstrat- 
ing with the harried Premier. The Irish Coercion 
Bill was approaching expiry. It was understood 
that the question of renewing some of its clauses had 
been long fought in the Cabinet. Mr. Chamberlain 
and Sir Charles Dilke (who, on the retirement of 
Mr. Bright, had entered the Cabinet as President of 
the Local Government Board) were understood to 
be resolute in their opposition to further coercion. 
They looked for a cure for the ills of Ireland, not 
in coercion, but in an extension of local government. 
They were Home Rulers at a time when Mr. Glad- 
stone still held back. Mr. John Morley gave notice 
that when proposal was made to renew any sec- 
tion of the Coercion Bill he should oppose it. Mr. 
Morley's intimate relations at this time with Mr. 
Chamberlain gave the step ominous significance. 

A note made on the 15th of May (1885) indicates 
the state of things at this moment as it appeared to 
an observer of the scene : — 

There is more in Mr. John Morley's notice of amendment to 
the proposed introduction of a Crimes Bill than meets the eye. 
The fact is, the Government is at the present moment on the 



THE STORM BURSTS. 175 

eve of dissolution. It is not Russia nor Egypt, but Ireland. 
The opposition Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke have 
always offered to attempts to govern Ireland by coercion has not 
been smoothed down by the fact of their taking office. They 
have, I believe, steadfastly fought against the determination of 
the majority of the Cabinet partially to renew the Crimes Act. 
They were beaten ; and the announcement by Mr. Gladstone of 
the introduction of a Bill not being followed by their immediate 
resignation, it was generally supposed that a compromise had been 
effected and the cloud blown over. This assumption was appar- 
ently confirmed by the announcement made by Mr. Gladstone 
on Tuesday that the Government are, after all, determined to 
deal this Session with the Purchase Clauses of the Land Act. 
That step has, however, rather had the effect of hastening the 
crisis than of smoothing it over. Neither Mr. Chamberlain nor 
Sir Charles Dilke objects to a measure dealing with land pur- 
chase. What they do object to is that it should be introduced 
at the present crisis. Their watchword is, " Local Government 
for Ireland and no Coercion." If you have coercion and no 
extension of local government, that is a state of things not com- 
pensated for by the introduction of a Bill dealing with the Pur- 
chase Clauses. Indeed, I believe they take the view that the 
introduction of such a Bill would be harmful rather than other- 
wise. It would be an appropriate sequel to the extension of local 
government. To give it priority is, in their opinion, dangerous. 
If Ireland is to pledge its bond for money assistance, it had evi- 
dently better be done upon the credit of local governing bodies 
than under the supervision of an Imperial Government harassed 
on many sides. 

It is possible that what looks like an already broken bridge 
may be mended, and crisis avoided. That will depend upon 
the squeezability of the Whig portion of the Cabinet. The 
Radical section have resolutely made up their minds that the 
fullest extent to which they can conscientiously go to meet the 
views of Earl Spencer is that the Crimes Act, if renewed, shall 
run for one year only. This would leave the matter to be dealt 
with by the new Parliament, evidently a desirable thing. Fail- 
ing concession on this point, Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles 
Dilke, with whatever profound regret at taking a step that 
must be embarrassing to Mr. Gladstone, will resign their places 



176 MR. GLADSTONE. 

in the Government. They will be followed out of the Cabinet, 
certainly by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, and possibly by one or two 
others. It is difficult to see how, with such powerful forces 
below the gangway, a reconstructed Government will be able to 
carry the Crimes Bill. 

This state of affairs, as may well be supposed, weighs 
heavily upon Mr. Gladstone, who is still struggling to effect 
an honorable settlement with Russia. 

Here is another peep at the House of Commons on 
the eve of catastrophe, the approach to which it will 
be perceived was vaguely, but surely felt. The note, 
made in the House of Commons, is dated Friday 
night, 5th of June : — 

It was pitiful to note to-night the manner in which, when 
public business commenced, all eyes were turned towards the 
Treasury Bench. The Cabinet Council which it was (quite er- 
roneously) thought would settle the Ministerial crisis had been 
held. Mr. Gladstone was in his place, looking pale and worried 
with a paper in his hand, upon which he now and then turned a 
troubled glance. He does not bring down manuscript to the 
Treasury Bench unless it contains notes for some portentous 
announcement. What this might be members could only guess, 
and all o-uessed the same thing. Sir William Harcourt sat next 
to the Premier, even his massive head bent under the pressure of 
a Ministerial crisis. Beyond was Lord Hartington, an interesting 
convalescent who every one was glad to see had recovered his robust 
health. Presently Mr. Childers came in. But that was all. Sir 
Charles Dilke, usually most punctual in his attendance, was absent, 
and so was Mr. Chamberlain. What had happened was clear to 
the meanest comprehension. The crisis had burst ; Mr. Chamber- 
lain and Sir Charles Dilke had resigned, and the sheet of note- 
paper with which Mr. Gladstone nervously toyed contained the 
terms in which he would, in due course, announce the fact to the 
House. 

Five minutes later Sir Charles Dilke bustled in and took a seat 
near the Home Secretary. Evidently there was somewhere a flaw 
in the course of conjecture, which was finally shattered by the ap- 



THE STORM BURSTS. 177 

pearance of Mr. Chamberlain witla a white orchid— symbol of 
peace — in his buttonhole. The Ministry were for the moment 
safe. But the crisis was postponed, not averted — a turn of affairs 
which rather deepened the feeling of discontent and depression. 
If anythino- was to happen, in Heaven's name let it happen at once 
and make an end of this indefinite dragging on through the slough 
of uncertainty. 

Mr. Gladstone, rising at eleven o'clock to-night in a moder- 
ately filled House, delivered a remarkable and interesting speech. 
Looking at him as he stood at the table with a certain ashen-gray 
tinge on his face, and a distinct lassitude in his manner, it might 
wefl be thought that here was a man weary to death of incessant 
labor, gasping for the holiday near at hand. This view was 
strengthened by the tone in which he spoke. The magnificent 
voice^for fifty years familiar in the House of Commons, which not 
many years ago resounded over Blackheath, and which sounded 
like a clarion through Midlothian, is broken. I believe that dur- 
ing his last visit to Midlothian he overstrained it, and though the 
faHure was at the time regarded as temporary, there appears 
now no doubt of its permanency. But though the Premier seemed 
almost in the last stage of physical exhaustion, and his voice was 
husky, and sometimes did not rise above a whisper, there was no 
sign of failing power in the skill and force with which he met the 
battery arrayed against him, for some hours blazing away at 
every point of Ministerial policy. The sentences were as perfect 
in their construction as ever, the play of fancy as free, and the 
sarcasm as keen as in his best days. 

That was the last time this Parliament of the 
Queen adjourned with Mr. Gladstone in the position 
of Leader. On the following Monday the House 
resumed debate on the second reading of the Customs 
and Inland Revenue Bill, embodying Mr. Childers' 
Budget proposals. Sir Michael Hicks Beach sub- 
mitted an amendment condemning the increase of the 
beer and spirit duties, and the failure to give relief 
to local taxation. The appearance of the House dur- 

12 



178 MR. GLADSTONE. 

ing the greater part of the sitting did not indicate 
approach to a memorable event. Sir Michael Beach, 
Mr. Childers, and Sir Stafford Northcote, upon 
whom the burden of debate at this time chiefly fell, 
were not able to overcome the depression that had 
fallen upon the assembly. 

It was ten minutes to one in the morning of the 9th 
of June when Mr. Gladstone rose to continue the 
debate. He was in fine form, and in the excitement 
of the hour had overcome the huskiness of voice that 
still beset him. It was half-past one when he re- 
sumed his seat, and the division was forthwith called. 
As members streamed out to vote, few, if any, fore- 
casted the result. The Government, often threat- 
ened, would come out with a reduced majority, but 
sufficient to avert defeat. Mr. Gladstone, having 
made an end of speaking, sat for a moment with 
flushed face and folded arms, evidently thinking 
with hot resentment of "the regular Opposition," 
"the loyal Opposition," "the national Opposition," 
"the patriotic Opposition," "the constitutional Oppo- 
sition," he had a moment earlier, with ringing voice 
and sweeping gestures, denounced. Then he sud- 
denly bethought him of his duty to the Queen, which 
involved the writing of a letter summarizing the 
proceedings of the night. Picking up paper and 
writing-pad he made his way as quickly as possible 
through the throng into the lobby. The division 
would occupy nearly a quarter of an hour, and as 
time was precious he would improve the opportunity 



THE STORM BURSTS. 179 

while it presented itself. When he came back he 
opened the writing-pad on his knee and went on 
with the letter, undisturbed by the stream of mem- 
bers constantly passing him on the way to their 
places. 

At a quarter to two this morning (writes the eye-witness 
already quoted from) the inflow of members began to fall off. 
They had at first rushed in like the sea. They now trickled back 
like a brook in June. As the final moment arrived the excitement 
grew in intensity. Lord Randolph Churchill was back, sitting 
on the extreme edge of the seat, straining his eyes, first towards 
one door, then to the other, looking for the teller who should 
be first in. Sir Henry Wolff bustled in and out, bringing the 
latest report of the figures. The buzz of conversation rose higher 
and higher ; and still, as at another crisis Madame Defarge went 
on knitting, Mr. Gladstone went on writing, " presenting his 
humble duty to the Queen," informing her how matters thus 
far had fared. 

Presently Lord Kensington, who had been " telling " the 
Ministerialists, made his way with difficulty through the 
crowd at the bar. Lord Richard Grosvenor, who was " telling '* 
with the Opposition, had not yet arrived. Here was a portentous 
incident, the significance of which could not be misunderstood. 
If the Ministerialists were through the lobby first, they must 
be the smaller number. But it was remembered that the 
Liberals, even when in a considerable majority, are often the 
first through the lobby. No one dared either be sure or sad. 

Sir Henry Wolff, who had made another excursion to the 
gates of the Opposition lobby, returned with radiant face, calling 
out the numbers as he passed the Front Opposition Bench, and 
carrying the glad tidings to his excited Leader. Then Lord 
Randolph gave vent to his feelings in a shout of delight. It 
was taken up from members near him, and was echoed in the 
Irish camp behind. In another minute all the tellers were in, 
and it was seen that Lord Richard Grosvenor, instead of moving 
to the right, the place of the victor in the line of Whips, was 
edging to the left. 

Lord Randolph Churchill leapt on to the bench, and, waving 



180 MR. GLADSTONE. 

his hat madly above his head, uproariously cheered. Mr. Healy 
followed his example, and presently all the Irish members, 
and nearly all the Conservatives below the gangway, were 
standing on the benches waving hats and pocket-handkerchiefs, 
clamorously cheering. This was renewed when the figures were 
read out by Mr. Winn, and again when they were proclaimed 
from the Chair. From the Irish camp rose cries of " Buck- 
shot ! Buckshot ! " " Coercion ! " These had no relevancy to the 
Budget scheme ; but they showed that the Irish members have 
not forgotten Mr. Forster, and that this was their hour of victory 
rather than the day of the triumph of the Tories. 

When the figures were announced, showing the Government 
in a minority of twelve, Lord Randolph Churchill threatened to 
go mad with joy. He wrung the hand of the impassive Rowland 
Winn, who regarded him with a kindly curious smile, as if he 
were some wild animal. Mr. Gladstone had resumed his letter 
and went on calmly writing, whilst the Clerk at the table 
proceeded to run through the Orders of the Day as if nothing 
particular had happened. But the House was in no mood for 
business. Cries for the adjournment filled the House. Mr. 
Gladstone, still holding his letter in one hand and the pen in 
the other, quietly moved the adjournment, and the crowd 
surged through the doorway, the Conservatives still tumultuously 
cheering. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE STOP-GAP GOVERNMENT. 

At the sitting of the House next day, Mr. Gladstone, 
using the phrase consecrate to the occasion, stated 
that, as a consequence of the decision arrived at by 
the House early in the morning, the Cabinet had 
thought fit to " submit a dutiful communication to 
Her Majesty." It would, he added, with the gravity 
of which on such occasions he is a master, be pre- 
mature to disclose the nature of that communication. 
There was, indeed, no necessity for the confidence. 
Every one knew that the Ministry had resigned, and 
every one expected that Lord Salisbury would be sent 
for. These forecasts were realized. At first there 
was a hitch. Lord Salisbury accepting only condition- 
ally the duty imposed upon him by the Queen. He 
frankly declared that before entering upon office it 
was indispensable, in view of the relative position of 
parties in the House of Commons, that the Conser- 
vative leaders should receive from Mr. Gladstone a 
pledge to support them in measures absolutely neces- 
sary to bring the Session to a close. 

The two points specified by Lord Salisbury in the 
correspondence that followed were the undisputed 
right of the Government to take precedence for their 



182 MR. GLADSTONE. 

business whenever Supply or the Appropriation Bill 
was put down. Secondly, he claimed authority to 
issue Exchequer Bonds for the requirements of the 
Estimates if no other provision was made. His com- 
munication was addressed to the Queen, and by her 
sent on to Mr. Gladstone, with request for prompt 
reply. Th^ delicate negotiation was prolonged and 
embarrassed by the circumstance that the grave Minis- 
terial crisis was not permitted to interrupt the Queen's 
holiday, which, enjoyed at Balmoral, necessitated 
much journeying to and fro, not only of Queen's 
messengers, but of Ministers-elect. Mr. Gladstone 
finally answered that he had consulted his colleagues 
on the matter, and they were agreed it would be con- 
trary to their public duty to compromise their liberty 
by giving the specific pledges Lord Salisbury de- 
manded. At the same time he assured the Queen 
that " in the conduct of the necessary business of the 
country during the remainder of the Session, there 
would be no disposition to embarrass the Government 
serving your Majesty." 

With this assurance Lord Salisbury had to be con- 
tent, and forthwith set about constructing his Ministry. 
Lord Randolph Churchill, who, as we have seen, had 
done more than any other member of the Opposition 
to oust Mr. Gladstone, came to the front. What he 
had irreverently termed " the old gang " did not love 
him. The section of the party which, without in- 
vidious distinction, may be described as being elderly 
and respectable, shook their heads and protested that 



THE STOP-GAP GOVERNMENT. 183 

they would not follow the young man, — a feeling of 
repulsion in which they certainly had the sympathy 
of Lord Salisbury. But the Young Man won all 
along the line. As Mr. Chamberlain put it in a con- 
temporary speech, " Goliath hath succumbed to David, 
and Lord Randolph Churchill has his foot on Lord 
Salisbury's neck." Sir Stafford Northcote, a man 
whose great Parliamentary capacity was obscured by a 
retiring disposition, was shelved in the recesses of the 
House of Lords. He was named Earl of Iddesleigh, 
and endowed with the high-sounding but harmless 
office of First Lord of the Treasury. As a compro- 
mise, Lord Randolph had to accept Sir Richard 
Cross at the Home Office, Mr. W. H. Smith as Secre- 
tary of State for War, and Lord George Hamilton as 
First Lord of the Admiralty. He himself became 
Secretary of State for India, providing for Mr. Gorst 
with the Solicitor-Generalship and its attendant 
knighthood, and Mr. Arthur Balfour as President 
of the Local Government Board, whilst Sir Henry 
Wolff was assured of entrance upon a diplomatic 
career that finally landed him Her Majesty's Minister 
at Madrid. Sir Michael Hicks Beach undertook the 
Chancellorship of the Exchequer, with the Leadership 

of the House. 

A most significant appointment was that of Lord 
Carnarvon to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. It 
was reported when the office was accepted that Lord 
Carnarvon had specifically stipulated that an attempt 
should be made to rule Ireland without coercion. 



IM MR. GLADSTONE. 

This rumor was confirmed at the earliest possible 
moment, when, on the reassembling of Parliament 
after the re-election of the new Ministers, the Lord 
Lieutenant informed the House of Lords that it was 
not intended to reintroduce the Crimes Act for 
Ireland. 

It was recognized on both sides that the whole duty 
of the new Government was to wind up the business 
of the Session, dissolve Parliament, and appeal to the 
country. 

Speaking at the Cobden Club dinner on the Satur- 
day immediately following the defeat of the Govern- 
ment, Mr. Chamberlain described the situation with 
an incisiveness and lucidity that never vary with 
change of political attitude : " Lord Salisbury and the 
Tory party," he said, " must lie on the bed they have 
made for themselves. They cannot evade their re- 
sponsibilities. No doubt their situation is a very 
difficult one ; but they should have thought of that 
before. No doubt they find themselves now face to 
face with many inconvenient declarations. There are 
statements which we have been taught to describe as 
' commercial illustrations ' which will now have to be 
explained away. There are pledges which have been 
given, and the party, as a whole, are committed, if 
words mean anything, to an entire reversal of almost 
the whole of the policy of the last few years. But, 
gentlemen, we are not alarmed. Those pledges were 
not made to be kept. They have served their purpose, 
and I look forward with interest to the spectacle, 



THE STOP-GAP GOVERNMENT. 185 

which I believe will shortly be presented, of a great 
party with indecent expedition hastening to divest 
itself of a whole wardrobe of pledges and professions 
which it has accumulated during the past few years, 
stripping off every rag of consistency, and standing 
up naked and not ashamed, in order that it may 
squeeze itself into office. That is the position, gentle- 
men. It is only upon these terms that what will be 
known in history as the Stop-gap Government can 
invite the toleration of its opponents. They must not 
undo our work. They must not jeopardize the results 
already accomplished. They must continue on the 
main lines of the policy they have so often and so 
vehemently condemned. But if they are willing to do 
that, for my part I see no reason why they should not 
remain as caretakers on the premises until the new 
tenants are ready, in November, for a prolonged, and, 
I hope, permanent, occupation." 

It fell to the lot of Sir Michael Beach to provide a 
Budget in lieu of the one upon which the late Ministry 
had been overthrown. This task he accomplished in 
a charmingly simple manner. By the vote of the 8th 
of June the House of Commons had decided against 
the proposal of Mr. Childers to increase the beer and 
spirit duties. The existing arrangement under this 
head would accordingly be left undisturbed. But the 
whole of the other proposals of the Budget on which 
the late Government had been dethroned would be 
adopted by their successors. The non-increase of the 
beer and spirit duties would leave a deficit of four 



186 MR. GLADSTONE. 

millions, which he proposed to meet by the elementary 
device of issuing exchequer bills. 

On the 14th of August Parliament was prorogued, 
and on the 18th of November it was dissolved. 

The interval was a busy one for politicians. Mr. 
Chamberlain came prominently to the front, delivering 
a series of stirring speeches at Holloway, Hackney, 
Hull, Warrington, Glasgow, Bradford, and other great 
centres of population. Knowing nothing of the brink 
on which he stood, unsuspecting the astounding trans- 
formation scene silently preparing, he at this epoch 
out-rouged all Radicals. He propounded what was 
known as " the unauthorized programme," travelling 
along Radical lines far beyond the point of junction 
at which Mr. Gladstone, impelled by pressure from 
below the gangway, had yet been able to fix it. None 
were more alarmed than a section of his former 
colleagues. " The Salvation Army in Politics," Mr. 
Goschen described the enthusiastic band that followed 
the member for Birmingham. Mr. Chamberlain, for 
his part, was not less bitter in denunciation of 
Moderate Liberals than he was of Conservatives. 
With eye plainly fixed on Lord Hartington and Mr. 
Goschen, he, speaking at Warrington on the 8th of 
September, uttered the warning that " if the Moderate 
Liberals joined the Tories they would be going out of 
the frying-pan into the fire " — a curious reflection 
from so high authority to come upon in the last 
decade of the century. " It is perfectly futile and 
ridiculous," he in this same speech protested, " for 



THE STOP-GAP GOVERNMENT. 187 

any political Rip Yan Winkle to come down from the 
mountain on which he has been slumbering and tell 
us that these things [enumerated in the Unauthorized 
Draft] are to be excluded from the Liberal Pro- 
gramme. The world has moved on while these 
dreamers have been sleeping, and it would be absurd 
to ignore the growth of public opinion and the change 
in the situation the Reform Acts have produced." 

On the 9th of November Mr. Gladstone left Hawar- 
den on his new Midlothian Campaign, his journey 
northward being, as before, a triumphal progress. 
At all the large towns multitudes thronged round the 
carriage and were addressed in vehement, vigorous 
speeches. 

The Parnellites, having made it possible for the 
Conservatives to turn Mr. Gladstone out of office, loyally 
maintained the alliance at the general election. They 
were not without hope that they would obtain from 
a Tory Government that Home Rule on which their 
hearts were set and which Mr. Gladstone had hitherto 
refused. Lord Carnarvon had made haste to announce 
that the Coercion Bill would not be renewed. Later, 
on the eve of the general election, Mr. Parnell had 
referred to the position of Austria and Hungary as 
suggesting a possible basis of settlement of the Irish 
difficulty. Speaking at Newport on October 7th, Lord 
Salisbury jumped at this suggestion. He was bound to 
say that he had never seen any plan or suggestion that 
would at present give him the slightest ground for 
anticipating that in that direction would be found satis- 



188 MR. GLADSTONE. 

factory solution of the Irish problem. " But," he 
added, " I wish that it may be so." 

These things were on the surface. Much else was 
going on by subterranean passages, sufficient at all 
events to induce the Irish party to enlist their unrivalled 
electoral skill and activity in the service of Tory can- 
didates wherever they stood. The poll, under the Re- 
form Act, completed just before the change of Ministry, 
was taken upon a register which for the first time in- 
cluded the whole body of the householders and lodgers 
of the United Kingdom. The lowering of the franchise 
in the boroughs, bringing on to the Register large 
batches of Irish voters, was an immense assistance to the 
Constitutional party. Nevertheless, when the figures 
were finally adjusted it was found that the House of 
Commons was to the extent of exactly one half com- 
posed of Liberals, who numbered 335 against 249 Tories 
and 86 Parnellites. The counties had readjusted the 
balance of the boroughs, the newly enfranchised rustic 
voter supporting the hands that had emancipated 
him. 

Everything now plainly turned upon the attitude of 
the Irish members. They were masters of the situa- 
tion and their price was well known. That Lord 
Salisbury and his colleagues were considering whether 
it was worth what it would bring appeared from the 
fact that, contrary to custom established in 1868 and 
observed in 1874 and 1880, Ministers, having suffered 
at the polls a heavy defeat on strictly party lines, did 
not forthwith resign. Parliament need not meet just 



THE STOP-GAP GOVERNMENT. 189 

yet, and in the mean time a great deal might happen. 
One thing that happened was a meeting between Lord 
Carnarvon and Mr. Parnell, brought about at the 
invitation of the Conservative Lord Lieutenant, at 
which a Home Rule scheme was frankly discussed 
with friendliest attitude on the part of Lord Salisbury's 
colleague. When, some months later, the secret of 
this conference oozed out, it was affirmed on behalf of 
Lord Salisbury and his colleagues in the Cabinet that 
in this matter Lord Carnarvon had acted entirely on 
his own initiative, without authority from the Cabinet, 
an unusual proceeding on the part of a cautious and 
experienced statesman, and a very dangerous precedent 
to create. 

The first Session of the new Parliament opened on 
the 12th of January (1886), the Queen lending to the 
desperate Ministry the rare support of her presence 
at the opening ceremony. The Speech from the 
Throne confirmed the impression which had over- 
mastered earlier suspicion, that Lord Salisbury's 
Government had finally abandoned all idea of main- 
taining alliance with the Parnellites on the peremp- 
tory terms of their bringing in a Home Rule Bill. 
The benevolent attitude displayed by Lord Salisbury 
at Newport was changed, the Speech containing 
ominous announcement that "if the existing pro- 
visions of the Law prove inadequate to cope with 
the growing evils of organized intimidation, Parlia- 
ment will be asked to grant further powers to the 
executive. " 



190 MR. GLADSTONE. 

This settled the matter. The support of the Irish 
members withdrawn, the Government was doomed, 
and there remained only the question of the precise 
spot on which they should falL The Government 
manoeuvred to go out upon a division on the Irish 
Question, when they would have the advantage of 
dying gloriously in defence of the Union. Fate was 
against them, they being driven out of office upon an 
unromantic side issue. Amongst the amendments 
to the Address was one moved by Mr. Jesse Collings, 
regretting that the Queen's Speech contained no 
promise of legislation in the matter of small allot- 
ments for agricultural laborers. This amendment 
was carried by 329 votes to 250, and the Stop-gap 
Government, having achieved its mission, disappeared 
from the scene. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

HOME RULE. 

In a letter written by Mr. Gladstone to his friend 
Bishop Wilberforce, dated 1865, there occurs this 
remarkable passage: "There have been two great 
deaths, or transmigrations of spirit, in my political 
existence, — one very slow, the breaking of ties with 
my original party ; the other, very short and sharp, 
the breaking of the tie with Oxford. There will 
probably be a third and no more. " It is not possible 
that at this period Mr. Gladstone had in his mind 
the great disruption of 1886. Yet that event pre- 
cisely fulfils the forecast. 

It has been made a charge against Mr. Gladstone 
that through political exigencies and from lust of 
power he made a sudden turn-about-face on the Home 
Rule Question. That is a charge from which Lord 
Hartington at an early stage of the bitter contro- 
versy generously relieved him. Speaking at the 
Eighty Club dinner on the 5th of March, 1886, Lord 
Hartington said : " I think no one who has read or 
heard during a long series of years the declarations 
of Mr. Gladstone on the question of self-government 
in Ireland can be surprised at the tone of his present 
declaration. Lord Randolph Churchill, himself an 



192 MR. GLADSTONE. 

attentive student of Mr. Gladstone's speeches, can 
find no later date than 1871 in which Mr. Gladstone 
has spoken strongly against the demands of the Irish 
people for greater self-government. Well, when I 
look back to those declarations Mr. Gladstone made 
in his place in Parliament, which have not been 
infrequent, when I look to the increased definiteness 
given to those declarations in his address to the elec- 
tors of Midlothian and in his Midlothian speeches, 
when I look to the announcements which, however 
unauthorized and inaccurate, have never been asserted 
to be, and could not have been, mere figments of the 
imagination, but expressed more or less accurately 
not the conclusions which Mr. Gladstone had formed, 
but the ideas he was considering in his own mind, — 
I say, when I consider all these things, I feel that I 
have not, and that no one else has, any right what- 
ever to complain of the tone of the declarations 
which Mr. Gladstone has recently made on this 
subject. " 

This passage accurately deals with dates and occa- 
sions. Speaking at Manchester in the same year, 
Mr. Gladstone precisely described his position ante- 
cedent to the date of his third Administration. 
"Since 1871," he said, "when Home Rule came up 
above the surface, and long before it was at the 
front, 1 never once on any occasion have in principle 
condemned it. I have required to know its mean- 
ing. I have required to see that it was asked and 
sought for by the bulk of the Irish nation. But 



HOME RULE, 193 

never in its principle has it been condemned by 
me. " 

Turaing over the mighty volumes of his recorded 
speeches, Mr. Gladstone remembered six upon which, 
since the Home Rule Question became one of prac- 
tical politics, he had adverted to it. Three were 
delivered on public platforms — at Aberdeen in 
1872, in Midlothian 1879-80, and in Guildhall 1881. 
More important were three made in the House of 
Commons. The first in 1872 when, as Prime Min- 
ister, he was called upon to reply to Mr. Butt's reso- 
lution affirming Home Rule principles; the second 
in 1874, when he spoke as Leader of the Opposition ; 
the third in 1880, "when,'' as he with curious punc- 
tiliousness puts it, " I sat on these (the Opposition 
benches) as an independent member. " The present 
writer happened to hear the speech delivered in the 
House of Commons in 1872. After a lapse of more 
than twenty years there remains the impression left 
on the mind of the hearer of the unusual tone of the 
Prime Minister's declarations. At that time Mr. 
Butt was leader of a numerically small, personally 
an insignificant, party. Home Rule was a new cry, 
and was met with sometimes angry, always contemp- 
tuous protest, from politicians, whether Liberal or 
Conservative. Mr. Gladstone, by his speech, gave 
importance to what was otherwise a flat, uninterest- 
ing debate. Differing from other speakers outside 
the little Irish camp, he did not utter a non-possumus. 
What he did was to invite Mr. Butt to define Home 

13 



194 MR. GLADSTONE. 

Rule, formulate a scheme, submit it to the House 
and the country, and thereupon opinion might be 
formed. 

In February, 1882, Mr. P. J. Smith moved an 
amendment to the Address, declaring that " the only 
efficacious remedy for the deplorable condition of 
Ireland is a readjustment of the political relations 
established between Great Britain and Ireland by the 
Act of Union. " Mr. Gladstone then made a speech 
which was an, perhaps unconscious, echo of his 
reply to Mr. Butt ten years earlier. The process of 
education in Home Rule principles having in the 
interval progressed, he indeed went a step further, 
expressing himself favorable to the introduction of 
Local Government in Ireland, "rightly understood," 
he was careful to add. But he insisted that the pre- 
liminary step thereto could not be taken " until the 
Irish members had produced a plan and set forth the 
machinery by which they meant to decide between 
Imperial and local questions, and so to give satisfac- 
tion to members of the House of Commons upon the 
first and most paramount duty — namely, to main- 
tain the supremacy of the Imperial authority for 
every practical purpose relating to the interests of 
this great Empire. '^ 

In this same debate on the Address, speaking on 
the 16th of February, 1882, Mr. Gladstone made a 
declaration on the Home Rule Question, which he 
reasonably relies upon to acquit him of the charge of 
becoming with suspicious suddenness a convert to 



HOME RULE. 195 

Home Rule. "I believe," he said, "that when the 
demand is made from Ireland for bringing purely 
Irish affairs more especially or more largely under 
Irish control outside the walls of Parliament, the 
wise way to meet that demand is not the method 
adopted by the senior member for the University of 
Dublin (Mr. Plunket), who, if I understood him 
aright, said that anything recognizing purely Irish 
control over purely Irish affairs must necessarily be 
a step towards separation, and must, therefore, neces- 
sarily be fraught with danger. That I do not believe 
to be the wise or the just method of dealing with the 
subject. 

" In my opinion the wise and just method of deal- 
ing with it is this — to require that before any such 
plan can be dealt with, or can be examined with a 
view to being dealt with on its merits, we must ask 
those who propose it — and this is a question I have 
universally put — What are the provisions which you 
propose to make for the Supremacy of Parliament ? 
That has been my course, and that is the course in 
which I intend to persevere. I am bound to say that 
I have not yet received an answer. I never heard in 
the mouth of Mr. Butt, or from the mouth of any 
other gentleman, any adequate or satisfactory expla- 
nation upon that subject. And to this declaration 
of my opinions I have only one more limitation to 
add, and it is that I am not prepared to give to Ire- 
land anything which in point of principle it would 
be wrong to give to Scotland, if Scotland requires it ; 



196 MR. GLADSTONE. 

and that is a condition, that is a limitation, which I 
am sure Irish members of the most popular class 
will be ready to accept." 

The answer to Mr. Gladstone's inquiry as to the 
desirability, even the necessity, of granting Home 
Rule to Ireland was supplied by the issue of the gen- 
eral election of December, 1885. Out of 103 Irish 
members, 85 were returned pledged to support Home 
Rule. This was an overwhelming majority, but it 
was exceeded in proportion by the respective charac- 
ter of the two sections. Nineteen of the Home 
Rulers had been returned without a contest, — admis- 
sion of the impregnability of their position. Of the 
49 who went to the poll each received an average of 
4,329 votes against an average of 454 polled for each 
Conservative returned. 

There was no mistaking the direction in which the 
wind of public opinion blew. Mr. Gladstone, as 
a Constitutional statesman, accepted the mandate. 
His first hope was that the Government of Lord 
Salisbury would follow up the lines of the Newport 
speech and the amiable efforts of Lord Carnarvon, 
by attempting to grapple with the question. As he 
pointed out in his address to the electors of Mid- 
lothian, issued in February, 1886, " Weak as the 
Conservative Government was for ordinary purposes, 
it had great advantages in dealing with the Irish 
crisis. A comprehensive measure proceeding from 
them would have received warm and extensive 
support from within the Liberal party. It would 



HOME RULE. 197 

probably have closed the Irish Controversy within 
the Session of 1886, and have left the Parliament of 
1885 free to prosecute the stagnant work of ordinary 
legislation, with the multitude of questions that it 
included. My earnest hope was to support the Cabi- 
net in such a course of policy." 

Happening to meet Mr. Arthur Balfour, a fellow- 
guest at Eaton Hall, Mr. Gladstone took the oppor- 
tunity of expressing the hope that Lord Salisbury's 
Government, which still hung on to office, would 
take a strong and early decision on the Irish Ques- 
tion. "If," he said, "you bring in a proposal for 
settling the whole question of the future Govern- 
ment of Ireland my desire would be, reserving of 
course necessary freedom, to treat it in the same 
spirit in which I have endeavored to proceed in 
respect to Afghanistan and the Balkan Peninsula. " 

This overture was declined, and Mr. Gladstone 
discovered that if the aspirations of Ireland were 
to be satisfied he must take the field in person. 
Already there were disquieting rumors of a new 
departure. In mid-December, a newspaper para- 
graph appeared purporting to give an outline of the 
Home Rule scheme sanctioned by the Liberal chief. 
This Mr. Gladstone discreetly contradicted. "The 
scheme " (which Mr. John Morley described as " the 
guess of some enterprising newspaper gentleman ") 
" is not, " Mr. Gladstone averred, " an accurate repre- 
sentation of my views, but, as I presume, a speculation 
upon them. It is not published with my knowledge 



198 MR. GLADSTONE. 

or authority, nor is any other beyond my own public 
declarations.'' 

A month later Mr. Gladstone had formed his Min- 
istry on the resignation of Lord Salisbury. It be- 
came necessary, when inviting colleagues to join him, 
that the Premier should precisely state his views on 
the Home Rule Question. This statement, it soon 
appeared, was not satisfactory to Lord Hartington 
nor to Sir Henry James. The latter sacrificed 
opportunity of succeeding to the splendid position of 
Lord Chancellor rather than join in Mr. Gladstone's 
new crusade. It is interesting to recall the fact that 
neither Lord Hartington nor Sir Henry James at 
this time contemplated permanent severance from the 
Liberal party. Lord Hartington spoke of the great 
regret with which he found himself " for a time sepa- 
rated from, or at any rate not in complete harmony 
with, those with whom I have for so many years 
found my chief pride and pleasure in acting. " " I 
am not going to take up my abode in a cave," Sir 
Henry James told his constituents. "The climate 
of a cave would not suit me. " With these two excep- 
tions, and the temporary withdrawal of Sir Charles 
Dilke from political life, the new Ministry was 
formed principally of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues in 
his former Administration. 

Contemplating the labor attendant on an attempt 
to pilot a Home Rule Bill through the House, Mr. 
Gladstone did not again take up the Office of Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, with which some of the 



HOME RULE. 199 

most brilliant episodes of his career were connected. 
Sir William Harcourt, whom some prophets expected 
to see on the Woolsack, became Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, Sir Farrer Herschell becoming Lord 
Chancellor with the title Lord Herschell. Lord 
Rosebery was Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville 
caring for the Colonies. Mr. Chamberlain was 
President of the Local Government Board, Mr. John 
Morley Chief Secretary, Lord Aberdeen undertaking 
the duties of Lord Lieutenant. Mr. Trevelyan was 
Secretary for Scotland, Mr. Heneage Chancellor of 
the Duchy of Lancaster, and Mr. Jesse Collings 
Under-Secretary of the Local Government Board. 
The brief Ministerial career of Mr. Collings was 
checkered by two circumstances — one a squabble 
about his salary, the other his being unseated for acts 
of bribery committed by his agent at the Ipswich 
election. 

On the 3rd of February Mr. Gladstone completed 
his new Cabinet. Before a month had sped it was 
evident that all was not well within its recesses. 
At a Conference of the London and Counties Liberal 
Union held on the 2nd of March, reference was made 
to the calm that appeared to prevail in political 
circles. "I am not sure," said Mr. John Morley, 
gravely shaking his head, "that it is not the calm of 
the glassy waters on the edge of the bend of the 
Niagara." The 22nd of March was the date origi- 
nally fixed for the introduction of Ministerial meas- 
ures dealing with Ireland, one treating the Land 



200 MR, GLADSTONE. 

Question, the other Local Government. As the day 
approached it was postponed for a fortnight. Before 
that extension of time was exhausted Mr. Chamber- 
lain and Mr. Trevelyan had resigned, being followed 
by Lord Morley and Mr. Heneage. It was made 
known later that Mr. Chamberlain's main objection 
to Mr. Gladstone's programme centred, not on the 
Home Rule Bill, but on the Land Bill. Addressing 
his constituents in Birmingham on the 21st April, 
Mr. Chamberlain said he "was afraid his opposition 
to the Land Purchase Bill could not be met. " His 
still impregnable Radicalism was indicated by the 
fact that he objected to the measure "because it 
pledged the future capital and earnings of the country 
in order to gratify Irish landlords." His opposition 
to the Home Rule Bill was, he added, conditional, 
and would be withdrawn if the representation of 
Irish members at Westminster were maintained. 

Mr. Gladstone patched up his Ministry and went 
forward with the task he had taken in hand. On 
the 8th April, in a densely crowded and profoundly 
excited House, he explained the clauses of his Home 
Rule Bill. For three hours and a half he spoke, 
with unfailing vigor and with a lucidity that made 
clear to the listening throng all the intricacies of his 
scheme. The main proposal was that a body seated 
in Dublin should have control of the Executive Gov- 
ernment in Ireland and of its legislative business. 
The Parliament was to consist of two representative 
chambers, an Upper and a Lower House. The latter 



HOME RULE. 201 

would be built upon the nucleus of the 103 members 
then sitting at Westminster as representatives of 
Ireland. Those present during the delivery of the 
speech will not forget that no proposal of the Bill 
was received with such hearty and general cheering. 
Before a week had passed it was selected as the 
clause upon which the fullest measure of opposition 
should be concentrated. Five days later the Irish 
Land Purchase Bill was introduced with the effect 
of further alienating friends and strengthening foes. 
Early in the morning of the 9th of June the House 
divided on the second reading of the Home Rule 
Bill, which, amid a scene of wild excitement, was 
rejected by a majority of thirty in a House of 652 
members. 

The Cabinet decided on an immediate dissolution 
and the reference of the issue to the constituencies. 
It was a big undertaking, for, as things had now got 
mixed, it would be necessary for Mr. Gladstone to 
gain in Great Britain not less than 108 seats in order 
to retain office. He had to fight not only against the 
regular Conservative Opposition, but against a sec- 
tion of the old Liberal party, respectable in its num- 
bers, influential in its membership. Mr. Bright, 
once the foremost champion of Irish Nationality, had 
long been drifting into line with the Tory landlords. 
The author of the famous phrase "Force is no 
remedy," was now on the side of the Coercionists. 
This change had been commented upon by the Irish 
members in terms whose violent animosity naturally 



202 MR. GLADSTONE. 

aggravated a man who had many claims upon their 
gratitude and respect. Mr. Bright threw himself 
into the election contest on the side of the Tories 
with much of the vigor with which he had in earlier 
days fought the battle of the people in the Corn 
Law Controversy, and in the field of Parliamentary 
reform. In a speech delivered on the eve of the 
election, he declared that "the legislation proposed 
by Mr. Gladstone is only another step forward in 
the march through rapine to the break-up of the 
United Kingdom." 

Mr. Chamberlain brought to bear on the campaign 
his unrivalled experience in the strategy of elec- 
tioneering gained when Birmingham was winning 
for itself the position of the stronghold of Liberal- 
ism. Lord Hartington carried his personal and ter- 
ritorial influence into opposition against his former 
chief. The united, and much invigorated, body of 
Conservatives joined hands with a mixed contingent 
of Whigs and Radicals. The combination was irre- 
sistible, and when the sum total of the election was 
reached, Mr. Gladstone found himself in a minority 
of 113. The new Parliament consisted (in addition 
to the Speaker) of 318 Conservatives, 73 quondam 
Liberals, an allied force of 391, mustered against 
278 Home Rulers, of whom 85 were under the per- 
sonal leadership of Mr. Parnell. 



CHAPTEH XXIII. 

IN OPPOSITION. 

This blow, falling unexpectedly upon a man in his 
seventy-seventh year, was by ordinary computation 
sufficient to finally quench desire for struggle or hope 
of victory. With Mr. Gladstone it served simply as 
the incentive to further action. He had been beaten 
down to the ground before. In 18T4 he himself 
thought his race was run. Yet a little while and he 
returned to the course, his colors, after strenuous 
struggle, again flashing in the front. As compared 
with his position after the general election of 1874, 
his plight in the summer of 1886 was infinitely more 
hopeless. At the earlier epoch the Liberal party, 
though defeated and disheartened, was, to such 
extent as is possible with it, united. Now it was 
split in twain, and the rivalry of the old political 
parties was loving-kindness compared with the bitter 
hatred of severed brethren. Mr. Bright' s attitude 
towards his colleague and friend of forty years was 
typical of the chasms riven in the party. Not only 
had his old captains turned upon him, carrying with 
them files of private soldiers, but, in even larger 
proportion, defections arose in the Liberal press. 
Of London morning papers only one, The Daily 
News, at this crisis under new editorial management, 



204 MR. GLADSTONE. 

remained faithful to the Liberal chief and the main 
body of the Liberal party. In the country important 
papers like The Scotsman in Edinburgh and The 
Daily Post in Birmingham, having through many 
years done conspicuous service to the Liberal cause, 
now joined the enemy. 

In "An Artist's Reminiscences," Mr. Rudolf 
Lehmann quotes a personal tribute paid by the late 
Sir Andrew Clark to his illustrious patient, which 
sharply indicates Mr. Gladstone's position at this 
time. "Here is a man," he said, "who at the very 
end of a long life, honorably spent in the service of 
his country, in possession of everything a mortal can 
possibly desire, risks fame, position, the love, nay, 
the esteem of his country and his Sovereign — every- 
thing in fact worth living for — in order to carry out 
what he is profoundly convinced to be right. And 
how that man is vilified ! But, mark my word, no 
man will be more regretted and more extolled when 
he is gone." 

At one time there seemed some possibility of the 
wound being sewed up and the Liberal party coming 
together once more. Mr. Chamberlain was, at first, 
a little restive finding himself yoked with a political 
party he had spent the earlier years of his life in 
combating. On the eve of Christmas, 1886, Lord 
Randolph Churchill, who in the formation of Lord 
Salisbury's Government had been made Chancellor 
of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Com- 
mons, abruptly resigned. There was a time in the 



IN OPPOSITION. 205 

Parliament of 1880-85 when Mr. Chamberlain and 
Lord Randolph Churchill were almost literally at 
daggers drawn. Their long personal duel reached 
a climax when Lord Randolph, in a succession of 
stormy scenes, indicted Mr. Chamberlain for alleged 
responsibility for the Aston Riots. Acting together 
in common opposition to Mr. Gladstone and all his 
works, the two had become as closely allied as they 
were formerly bitterly estranged. Lord Randolph's 
retirement from the Ministry filled Mr. Chamberlain 
with alarm. "The old Tory influence had gained 
the upper hand in the Government, " he told his con- 
stituents, " and we may find ourselves face to face 
with a Tory Government whose proposals no consis- 
tent Liberal would be able to support. " What were 
the Liberals going to do ? " It seems to me, " Mr. 
Chamberlain said, "they have a great, perhaps a 
final opportunity. We Liberals are agreed on ninety- 
nine points of our programme. We disagree only on 
one. Are we far apart upon the principles which 
ought to guide a settlement of that one — the Land 
Question ? T think not. I am convinced that sit- 
ting round a table, coming together in a spirit of 
compromise and conciliation, almost any three men. 
Leaders of the Liberal party, although they may hold 
opposite views upon another branch of the question, 
would yet be able to arrange some scheme. " 

This led to the famous Round Table Conference. 
It consisted of Sir William Harcourt, at whose house 
the meetings were held, and who still preserves the 



206 MR. GLADSTONE. 

table (which, by the way, is not round, but elliptical 
in shape), Mr. John Morley, Lord Herschell, Mr. 
Chamberlain, and Sir George Trevelyan. The pro- 
ceedings were watched with keen, interest. Upon the 
result everything turned. The Liberal party once 
reunited, the Salisbury Ministry on Sufferance would 
go the way of the Stop-gap Government. At a moment 
when agreement seemed within reach of outstretched 
hand there appeared in The Baptist an article from 
the pen of Mr. Chamberlain, in which he bitterly 
attacked Mr. Gladstone. This fell on the astonished 
world like a bolt out of the blue. Mr. Gladstone at 
once recognized the uselessness of further negotia- 
tions for peace, and at his instance Sir William 
Harcourt wrote suggesting that further meetings of 
the Conference should be suspended. It never met 
again, and day by day the bitterness of parted 
friends grew blacker. Lord Hartington and Mr. 
Chamberlain still insisted that they, at this, their 
best of times, 73 strong, were the true Liberals, the 
193 Home Rulers, returned by British constituen- 
cies, being the Seceders. They called themselves 
Liberal Unionists. But the style Dissentient Liber- 
als, which The Daily News attached to the little 
party, was more widely accepted. 

Promptly on the conclusion of the general election, 
Mr. Gladstone resigned office, and Lord Salisbury, 
after vain overtures for official coalition with Lord 
Hartington, reigned in his stead. Once more the 
veteran gladiator uttered a note of fatigue. On the 



IN OPPOSITION. 207 

4th August, 1886, he wrote to Mr. Arnold Morley, 
Chief Whip under his late Government : " Even apart 
from the action of permanent causes the strain of the 
last six years upon me has been great, and I must 
look for an opportunity of some change and repose, 
whether in or beyond this country." He did not 
appear during the brief Session in which Lord Ran- 
dolph Churchill led the House of Commons, spend- 
ing some autumn months in Italy. But he was back 
in the following Session, taking his place as Leader 
of the Opposition, fulfilling its duties with unspar- 
ing assiduity. He took a prominent part in the 
debates connected with the appointment of the Par- 
nell Commission, and surpassed himself in the vigor 
and eloquence of his speeches whenever the Irish 
Question came up. 

Such an occasion befell on a memorable night in 
the Session of 1889. Mr. John Morley had moved 
an amendment to the Address, challenging the Irish 
policy of the Government. Through four not very 
lively nights the talk had meandered. On Monday, 
the 1st of March, the House filled up in anticipation 
of a speech from Mr. Gladstone. The town was 
thrilling with the news which that morning had 
burst on the Courts of Justice where the Parnell 
Commission sat. Pigott, the person on whom The 
Times had mainly built up its charges against Mr. 
Parnell, had for some days of the previous week 
suffered scathing cross-examination by Sir Charles 
Russell. On Monday morning he was to have re- 



208 MR. GLADSTONE. 

turned to his place of torture. When his name was 
called no answer was forthcoming, and soon it was 
known that the perjured witness had fled. 

This collapse of a case from which so much was 
hoped — had indeed been accomplished — to the 
detriment of Home Rule visibly depressed the Min- 
isterialists. The elation in the Liberal ranks was 
typified by Mr. Gladstone's manner as he stood at 
the table. Mr. Morley's amendment was an invita- 
tion to the Government to abandon their coercive 
policy and attempt the pacification of Ireland by 
boldly and generously dealing with the agrarian 
question. "You may," said Mr. Gladstone, in a 
concluding passage delivered with thrilling energy, 
" deprive of its grace and of its freedom the act you 
are asked to do, but avert that act you cannot. To 
prevent its consummation is utterly beyond your 
power. It seems to approach at an accelerated rate. 
Coming slowly or coming quickly, surely it is com- 
ing. And you yourselves, many of you, must in 
your own breasts be aware that already you see in 
the handwriting on the wall the signs of coming 
doom. " 

Mr. Parnell had not been present during this 
speech. He came in after dinner, entering so quietly 
that few noticed him. Mr. Asquith, then an almost 
unknown Scotch member, had just concluded one of 
those speeches which rapidly laid the sure foun- 
dations of high ministerial position. When the 
crowded House became aware of Mr. Parnell on his 



IN OPPOSITION. 209 

feet in an obscure quarter below the gangway, the 
Irish members uprose, stormily cheering. Some 
English members above the gangway followed their 
example. Mr. Gladstone, looking round and recog- 
nizing Mr. Parnell, rose to welcome the return of a 
man who had, through strangely moving circum- 
stances, emerged from dire peril. His action was 
imitated by all his colleagues on the Front Bench, 
only Lord Hartington, who in company with Mr. 
Chamberlain and Sir Henry James through this 
Parliament insisted on seating themselves in line 
with Mr. Gladstone in testimony that they were still 
Liberals, though they habitually voted with the 
Tories — only Lord Hartington at the gangway-end 
of the Front Opposition Bench sat stolidly staring 
before him. 

It was a memorable scene, of which doubtless in 
later years Mr. Parnell, sitting lonely below the 
gangway, must sometimes have thought. 

After the collapse of the Parnell Commission, Mr. 
Gladstone's hope and faith, which had never fal- 
tered, began to inspire the great body of his followers 
in the House of Commons and throughout the coun- 
try. A majority of 113 appears a stone wall against 
which a Leader of the Opposition may beat in vain. 
Already it had begun to crumble. Not only did the 
bye-elections send recruits to the Home Rule army, 
but members like Sir George Trevelyan, Mr. Caine, 
and others who had seceded in 1886 began to straggle 
back to the colors. The rising tide that seemed to 

14 



210 MR. GLADSTONE. 

be carrying the Home Rule party into the haven where 
it would be was suddenly and calamitously checked by 
an influence least expected to work in this direction. 
An action for divorce brought by Captain O'Shea, 
with Mr. Parnell as co-respondent, resulted in the 
pronouncement of a decree nisi. It was naturally 
expected that Mr. Parnell would resign the Leader- 
ship of the Irish party, and, temporarily at least, 
withdraw from political life. Mr. Parnell hesitat- 
ing, Mr. Gladstone declared his position in the fol- 
lowing letter addressed to Mr. John Morley : — 

1, Carlton Gardens, Nov. 24, 1890. 

My dear Morley, — Having arrived at a certain conclusion 
with regard to the continuance at the present moment of Mr. 
Parnell's leadership of the Irish party, I have seen Mr. McCarthy 
on my arrival in town, and have inquired from him whether I was 
likely to receive from Mr. Parnell himself any communication on 
the subject. Mr. McCarthy rephed that he was unable to give me 
any communication on the subject. I mentioned to him that in 
1882, after the terrible murder in the Phoenix Park, Mr. Parnell, 
although totally removed from any idea of responsibility, had 
spontaneously written to me and offered to take the Chiltern Hun- 
dreds, an offer much to his honor, but one which I thought it my 
duty to decline. 

While clinging to the hope of a communication from Mr. Par- 
nell to whomsoever addressed, I thought it necessary, viewing the 
arrano;ements for the commencement of the Session to-morrow, to 
acquaint Mr. McCarthy of the conclusion at which, after using 
all the means of observation and reflection in my power, I had 
myself arrived. It was that, notwithstanding the splendid ser- 
vices rendered by Mr. Parnell to his country, his continuance at 
the present moment in the leadership would be productive of con- 
sequences disastrous in the highest degree to the cause of Ireland. 
I think I may be warranted in asking you so far to explain the 
conclusion I have given above as to add th*t the continuance 
which I speak of would not only place many hearty and effective 



IN OPPOSITION. 211 

friends of the Irish cause in a position of great embarrassment, 
but would render my retention of the leadership of the Liberal 
Party, based as it has been mainly upon the prosecution of the 
Irish cause, almost a nullity. 

This explanation of my own view I begged Mr. McCarthy to 
regard as confidential, and not intended for his colleagues gener- 
ally, if he found that Mr. Parnell contemplated spontaneous 
action. But I also begged that he would make known to the 
Irish party at their meeting to-morrow afternoon that such was 
my conclusion if he should find that Mr. Parnell had not in con- 
templation any step of the nature indicated. 

I now write to you in case Mr. McCarthy should be unable to 
communicate with Mr. Parnell, as I understand you may possibly 
have an opening to-morrow through another channel. Should 
you have such an opening I would beg you to make known to 
Mr, Parnell the conclusion itself, which I have stated in the 
earlier part of this letter. I have thought it best to put it in 
terms simple and direct, much as I should have desired had it 
been within my power to alleviate the painful nature of the situa- 
tion. As respects the manner of conveying what my public duty 
has made it an obligation to say, I rely entirely on your good 
feehng, tact, and judgment. 

Mr. Parnell declined to budge. There followed 
the historic scenes in Committee Room No. 15, 
where the once autocratic Irish chief stood at bay 
against the majority of his own followers. There 
were persistent rumors that Mr. Gladstone, tired out 
and finally disgusted with the man for whom he had 
sacrificed so much, had resolved to quit the scene. 
The story found credence only in proportion as it 
reached the outer edge of the circle that surrounded 
him. Those standing nearer, privileged to watch 
him work and hear him talk, smiled at the notion. 
He himself took no notice of the persistent ru- 
mors, till one Wednesday he indirectly answered in 



212 MR. GLADSTONE. 

conclusive fashion. On that day he made a speech 
in the House of Commons which is conceded bj 
friend and foe to rank on a level with his greatest 
efforts. The subject was of a kind that always in- 
spires his oratory. It was involved in a Bill pro- 
posing to remove the bar which fends off Roman 
Catholics from the Woolsack and from the Lord 
Lieutenancy of Ireland. It is almost the last ves- 
tige of religious intolerance left on the statute-book, 
and Mr. Gladstone hoped to remove it before his 
strength was spent. As he rose the House was 
crowded, a rare thing on a Wednesday afternoon, 
when the Speaker takes the chair at mid-day. He 
spoke for an hour and ten minutes, with an ease, a 
fulness of voice, a dignity of tone, and a strength of 
argument that charmed the House, if it did not con- 
vince the majority. It was a speech that, had it 
been the single effort of a lifetime, would have 
established a Parliamentary reputation. Coming 
incidentally in the course of the Session, a sort of 
recreation on an off-day in a strenuous campaign, it 
was a marvellous achievement for an octogenarian, 
and for a while dissipated any lingering idea that 
Mr. Gladstone, weary of the long fight, weighted 
under his load of years, was sighing for rest. 

But even with its doughtiest champion undis- 
mayed, it seemed that at last Home Rule had 
received its death-blow. It never had roused senti- 
ment in England, Scotland, and Wales as, for 
example, did the Reform Bill, or Mr. PlimsolPs 



IN OPPOSITION. 213 

crusade against overloaded ships. It was Mr. Glad- 
stone's marvellous personality, his indomitable 
energy, his persuasive eloquence, that had slowly 
worked on the public mind, bringing it into a con- 
dition in which it was resolved, at whatever cost, to 
do justice to a sister nation. Such a mood did not 
seem equal to the strain placed upon it by the squab- 
bles that now arose among the Irish members, by the 
uproar in Committee Room No. 15, by the assaults 
led by Mr. Parnell in person on The Freeman's 
Journal Office in Dublin,, by the recrimination in 
the newspapers, and by the abuse on the platforms. 
The sincerest friends of Home Rule were growing 
tired of it. Only Mr. Gladstone stood steadfast, 
pressing forward with unfaltering step towards a 
goal that seemed ever receding. 



CHAPTER XXIY. 

PREMIER ONCE MORE. 

Mr. Gladstone tells a story of a lady whom he met 
within a year of the general election of 1886. " She 
is, he says, an old and esteemed friend of mine, a 
very kind friend, but has the misfortune of being a 
strong Tory. We were talking over a recent speech 
of Lord Salisbury at the Carlton Club. This lady 
was very much annoyed that Lord Salisbury should 
have exhibited great fear of a dissolution. I said, 
'Well, it is very unreasonable indeed that he of all 
people in the world should dread a dissolution. 
Does not everybody know — presuming to speak of 
myself as a symbol of the party — is it not an estab- 
lished fact, that at the general election twelve 
months ago I was extinguished ? ' She said to me 
with considerable readiness, 'Yes, but you are pop- 
ping up again. ' " 

On the 28th of June (1892) the Salisbury Parlia- 
ment was dissolved, and as a result of the general 
election that followed, Mr. Gladstone "popped up 
again." In view of the magnitude of the task that 
lay before him, the elevation reached was, however, 
not encouragingly high. The Conservatives returned 
269 members, the Dissenting Liberals 46, a combi- 
nation of 315 against a total of Ministerialists of 



PREMIER ONCE MORE, 215 

355, of whom 274 ranked as Liberals, and 81 as 
Home Rulers. This majority of 40 was not so wide 
as Mr. Gladstone had secured in 1880, nor so deep 
as that which had kept Lord Salisbury in power for 
six years. But it would serve, or would serve sup- 
posing there were anything like cohesion in its com- 
ponent parts. A glance round the new House of 
Commons when it first gathered sufficed to dispel 
pleasing illusion. During the general election, what 
were safe Liberal seats were in several instances 
wantonly given away by division in the Liberal 
ranks. These divisions were marked in the House 
by the return of a little group, of whom Mr. Keir 
Hardie was the most prominent figure, calling them- 
selves the Independent Labor Party. Even worse was 
the chasm riven in the ranks of the Irish Nationalist 
members. Under the leadership of Mr. J. Redmond, 
there was a section who devoted themselves to carrying 
out what they believed to be the policy of Mr. Parnell. 
They were only nine all told ; but with a majority of 
two-score, a compact body of nine, masters of them- 
selves though Governments fall, is a matter of serious 
consideration. In addition to their ever threatened, 
sometimes accomplished, defection, was the damage 
accruing to the Home Rule cause from the evidence 
of lack of unity amongst tljose who professed to be 
its exponents and advocates. 

The majority was at no distant time to fall 
away ; but in the first pitched battle it mustered to a 
man. The new Parliament met on August 5th to 



216 MR. GLADSTONE: 

find Conservative Ministers still on the Treasury 
Bench. Issue was forthwith joined, the motion for 
the Address being met by a vote of no confidence, 
moved by Mr. Asquith, and seconded by Mr. Burt, 
an arrangement which accurately forecasted the in- 
clusion of these two members in the new Govern- 
ment. After three days' debate the House divided, 
the vote of no confidence being carried by 350 against 
310. The formal business of the Session being 
hastily wound up. Parliament was prorogued, to 
meet again on the 1st day of February for the 
despatch of business. 

No time was lost in bringing in the Home Rule 
Bill, which stood first in the programme announced 
from the Treasury Bench when the new Session 
opened under Mr. Gladstone's Premiership. On 
Monday, the 14th of February, 1893, Mr. Gladstone 
rose in a densely crowded House to ask leave to 
introduce what through the long fight he always 
punctiliously styled "a Bill for the better govern- 
ment of Ireland. " For him, if he had been inclined 
to take a personal view of the situation, the moment 
was one of supreme triumph. Out of the lowest, in 
some eyes the hopeless, depths of Opposition he 
had toiled upwards, till now he rose from the seat of 
the Prime Minister, a Home Rule Bill once more in 
his hands. The accessories of the scene were worthy 
of the occasion. Once more the introduction of chairs 
on the floor of the House was sanctioned in order to 
supplement the ordinary accommodation. It did not 



PREMIER ONCE MORE, 217 

come to much as far as heads were counted. But 
some two-score members, wedged in on the floor of 
the House, gave the last touch of animation to the 
crowded scene. From the Peers' Gallery the Prince 
of Wales looked down and listened. On his left 
hand sat the Duke of York. The Peers fought for 
their places like pittites at the door of a theatre on 
an attractive "first night." Lord Rosebery and 
Earl Spencer strategically avoided the crush by 
securing seats in the Diplomatic Gallery, otherwise 
crowded by Foreign Ministers and Attaches. When 
Mr. Gladstone stood at the table. Liberal and Irish 
members with one accord leaped to their feet, the 
ranks below the gangway shutting out from view the 
double row of Dissentient Liberals, who stubbornly 
kept their seats. The first sentences spoken by the 
Premier showed he was in full possession of his 
still splendid voice. According to habitude he had 
brought with him the famous pomatum-pot, which 
he placed on the table by the side of his notes. But 
only twice in a speech that exceeded two hours in 
the delivery did he have recourse to its refreshment. 

It was characteristic of his mental subtlety that 
he showed himself at the outset anxious to make it 
clear that the Bill of 1886, which had resulted in 
his defeat and long consignment to opposition, was 
not abandoned by its author. Five principles under- 
lay that measure. To those principles the new Bill 
would be found closely to adhere, though, he added 
parenthetically, " there are certain important changes 



218 MR. GLADSTONE. 

in detail." What these were, and as including the 
retention of the Irish members they were certainly 
not unimportant, was made clear in the luminous 
exposition to which the House listened with rapt 
attention. Subject to the reservation of certain 
matters for the consideration of the Imperial Parlia- 
ment the Bill as brought in constituted an Irish 
Legislature authorized to make laws for Ireland in 
matters exclusively relating to Ireland. The matters 
reserved for the Imperial Parliament related to the 
Crown, the Yiceroyalty, the declaration of war 
and the making of peace, national defence, foreign 
treaties, dignities, titles, coining, and everything 
belonging to external trade. With a view to reliev- 
ing Viceroyalty of party character, the Bill provided 
that the office should be held for six years, not as 
hitherto dependent upon the coming and going of 
Ministers. An Executive Committee of the Privy 
Council in Ireland would serve the Viceroy as a 
Cabinet, advising him whether to give or withhold 
his assent to Bills passed by the Irish Parliament, 
the veto of the Sovereign remaining in full force. 
The Irish Parliament would consist of two Chambers, 
a Legislative Council and a Legislative Body. The 
former, elected by constituencies composed of persons 
of twenty pound rating, would consist of forty-eight 
members, who would sit for eight years. The Legis- 
lative Body, consisting of 103 members, would be 
elected by the existing Parliamentary constituencies 
for a period of five years. The constabulary would 



PREMIER ONCE MORE. 219 

be gradually replaced by a body appointed under the 
direction of the new Legislature, remaining during 
the period of transition under the direction of the 
Viceroy. Irish members were to be retained at 
Westminster in the reduced number of 80, that being 
their precise proportional representation, and in only 
practical exercise of the rights of voting. They 
were, for example, precluded from taking part in 
divisions on any Bill or motion " exclusively affect- 
ing Great Britain or things or persons therein. " Nor 
were they to vote any money otherwise than for Im- 
perial purposes. As to financial arrangements, the 
Bill proposed that the Customs Duties should be 
appropriated as Ireland's contribution to Imperial 
finance, leaving to the Dublin Parliament revenues 
arising from the excise, local taxes, Post Office and 
Crown Lands. With the exception of the constabu- 
lary, to the cost of which the Imperial Exchequer 
would contribute one third, Ireland would be required 
to meet the whole of the charges under its new 
legislation. 

Folding up and laying aside the notes on which his 
explanation of the details of the Bill was based, 
Mr. Gladstone, in a noble peroration, the music of 
which was long sustained, pointed to the future. If 
this controversy were to end, the sooner they stamped 
and sealed the deed that was to efface all former 
animosities the better. For his part, he never would, 
and never could, be a party to bequeathing to his 
country a continuance of the heritage of discord, 



220 MR. GLADSTONE. 

handed down through seven centuries from genera- 
tion to generation with hardly a momentary inter- 
ruption. "Sir," he said, in a voice struggling with 
emotion, "it would be a misery to me if I had 
omitted in these closing years any measures possible 
for me to take towards upholding and promoting 
what I believe to be the cause, not of one party nor 
of another, not of one nation nor another, but of 
all parties and all nations inhabiting these islands." 
" Let me entreat you," he added in last words, spoken 
in clear though low voice, " if it were with my latest 
breath I would entreat you to let the dead bury its 
dead. Cast behind you every recollection of bygone 
evils, cherish, love, and sustain one another through 
all the vicissitudes of human affairs in the times 
that are to come." 

The first reading was not challenged to the point 
of a division. After four nights' debate Mr. Glad- 
stone, sitting up till one o'clock in the morning for 
the studiously delayed opportunity, brought in the 
Bill amid a fresh demonstration of enthusiasm on 
the Ministerial benches. Twelve nights were occu- 
pied in occasionally animated debate on the second 
reading, which was carried by 347 votes against 304, 
figures that show how, perhaps inspired rather by 
the energy of a great statesman and orator than by 
uncontrollable enthusiasm for the measure, the Min- 
isterial majority stood together. Forty-eight sittings 
were appropriated to Committee of the Bill. For 
the most part they were very dull, flashing up on the 



PREMIER ONCE MORE. 221 

last night in a scene of happily unparalleled dis- 
order, a free fight taking place on the floor of the 
House. After fourteen nights on the report stage, 
which offered opportunity of saying over again with 
the Speaker in the Chair what had been repeated ad 
nauseam in Committee, the closure was invoked and 
the Bill ordered for third reading. Three more 
nights sufficed for this final stage. The Bill was 
sent up to the Lords, who after four nights' debate 
threw it out, on September 8, by 419 votes against 41. 



I 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE BOW UNBENT. 

The Session had now entered upon its eighth month. 
Day and night through its restless, sometimes turbu- 
lent, progress Mr. Gladstone had been at his post 
bearing in person the brunt of the battle that raged 
round the Home Rule Bill. When, on the 21st of 
September, the House adjourned, it seemed an occa- 
sion peculiarly fitted for prolonged recess. But in 
spite of exceptional hard labor, the Session had been 
almost barren. Resolved that the year should have 
some legislative record, the Premier arranged for an 
autumn sitting. The House accordingly met again 
on the 2nd of November, and with brief intermission 
for Christmas Day, sat up to the 5th of March, 1894. 
The time was chiefly occupied with consideration of 
the English Local Government Bill and the Employ- 
ers' Liability Bill. The former the Lords seriously 
hampered with amendments. The latter they so 
completely crushed that the Government declined 
the responsibility of adopting the cripple, and it was 
laid aside. From first to last this, Mr. Gladstone's 
last active Parliamentary Session, included 226 sit- 
tings, ninety more than the average of the previous 
fifteen years. The work of a hundred days, bestowed 



THE BOW UXBENT. 223 

upon the Home Rule Bill, the Employers' Liability 
and the Scotch Sea Fisheries Bills, was nullified by 
the action of the House of Lords. 

Mr. Gladstone snatched a brief holiday at Biarritz. 
Whilst he was yet away the persistent stream of 
rumor asserting his intended resignation crystallized 
in a definite statement published in an evening news- 
paper. The positiveness of the assurance created pro- 
found sensation, not absolutely set at rest by the 
guarded terms in which Mr. Gladstone, personally 
appealed to, seemed to contradict the statement. He 
came back to find the House of Commons engaged in 
conflict with the House of Lords on the Employers' 
Liability Bill. They had introduced an amendment 
making it possible for railway servants to contract 
themselves out of the operation of the Act. Mr. 
Gladstone, declining to accept the Bill thus muti- 
lated, moved its discharge. Another tussle arose 
over the Parish Councils Bill. It was in explaining 
the reasons why the Government, shrinking from 
completing the wreck of the Session, would carry 
forward the Bill with the Lords' amendments, that 
he, on the 1st of March, made his last speech at the 
table of the House of Commons in the capacity of 
Prime Minister. 

Whilst the House was crowded to its fullest ca- 
pacity, it did not surely know what was happening. 
The air was full of rumors, but the immediate 
effect of the speech was to discredit the supposition 
that resismation was imminent. That it had been 



224 MR. GLADSTONE. 

decided upon and must take place at an early date 
was accepted as inevitable. There was, indeed, one 
passage forming the closing words of this memorable 
speech that, read by the light of subsequent events, 
plainly indicated Mr. Gladstone's position — that of 
a knight who had laid down his well-worn sword, 
hung up his dinted armor, content thereafter to look 
on the lists where others strove. The House of 
Lords, in accentuation of an attitude long assumed, 
had, he said, within the last twelve months shown 
itself ready, not to modify, but to annihilate the 
work of the House of Commons. "In our judgment," 
Mr. Gladstone said slowly and emphatically, "this 
state of things cannot continue." After a pause, 
necessitated by the vociferous cheering of the Lib- 
erals, he added, "For me, my duty terminates with 
calling the attention of the House to the fact, which 
it is really impossible to set aside, that in consider- 
ing these amendments, limited as their scope may 
seem to some to be, we are considering a part — an 
essential and inseparable part — of a question enor- 
mously large, a question that has become profoundly 
acute, a question that will demand a settlement, and 
must at an early date receive that settlement from 
the highest authority." 

This limitation of active personal share in the 
crusade against the Lords certainly sounded like an 
announcement of the end. But looking on the up- 
right figure standing by the brass-bound box, watch- 
ing the mobile countenance, the free gestures, noting 



THE BOW UNBENT, 225 

the ardor with which the flag was waved leading to 
a new battle-field, it was impossible to associate 
thought of resignation with the Premier's mood. 

The situation of the hour was one of difficulty not 
unfamiliar to the Leader of the Liberal party, and 
was approached and over-mastered with a skill pecu- 
liar to Mr. Gladstone. Faced by serried ranks of 
opponents, he was hampered on the flank by malcon- 
tents within his own camp. As usual at political 
crises, there was a body of statesmen below the 
gangway who knew much better how to set the battle 
in array than did the veteran commander. They 
thirsted for the blood of the hereditary legislator. 
They would be satisfied with nothing less than Lord 
Salisbury's head brought in on a charger by the 
Sergeant-at-Arms. When, on the threshold of his 
speech, Mr. Gladstone plainly declared that the con- 
flict between the two Houses had continued long 
enough they vociferously cheered. When he pro- 
ceeded to explain the plan of campaign involving a 
temporary suspension of hostilities, they relapsed 
into sullen silence. When the speech was over they, 
thirty-seven strong, went out into the lobby to vote 
against their chief, who, in the last division he took 
part in as Leader of the House of Commons, found 
himself walking shoulder to shoulder with the men 
who had defeated his cherished Home Rule scheme, 
and who now fell in line to support him against the 
revolt of a section of his followers. 

This episode was the only thing that marred a his- 

15 



226 MR. GLADSTONE. 

toric scene. The audience was worthy of the occa- 
sion. Closely packed from the benches on the floor 
to the topmost range of the Strangers' Gallery, it 
sat watchful and intently listening. Of the members 
who have taken prominent part in recent stirring 
Parliamentary history only Mr. Chamberlain was 
absent. Had he been there he might have spent an 
interval of proud, if pained, reflection on the unful- 
filled. Had he not, for conscience' sake, separated 
himself from the bulk of the Liberal party in the 
cataclysm of 1886, there would have been no occa- 
sion for the controversy that presently raged as to 
who should be Mr. Gladstone's successor. Mr. 
Arthur Balfour, a young elegant hardly known to the 
House, and not at all to the country when Mr. Glad- 
stone began his Ministry of 1880, now sat opposite 
to him. Leader of the Opposition, with an established 
reputation, whose daily growth had been watched by 
none with keener pleasure or more generous satisfac- 
tion than by the veteran against whose shield he had 
tilted. On Mr. Balfour's right hand sat Lord Ran- 
dolph Churchill, who within the same space of four- 
teen years had found time laboriously to build and 
abruptly to wreck a unique position. In the gallery 
over the clock sat the statesman who nearly twenty 
years ago succeeded Mr. Gladstone when " at the age 
of sixty-five and after forty-two years of laborious 
public life," he first thought himself entitled to 
retire. At arm's-length of the Duke of Devonshire, 
with head resting on his hands, sat Lord Rosebery, 



THE BOW UNBENT. 227 

looking on at a scene the secret of whose full import 
he shared with the few who knew how peculiarly 
close was his personal interest in it. Between them, 
bolt upright, sat Lord Spencer, to whom the turn 
affairs had taken must have been strangest of all. 
Had the event which now culminated happened ten 
years ago there is no doubt it would have been upon 
Lord Spencer, not Lord Rosebery, that all eyes 
would have been fixed as the successor of Mr. Glad- 
stone. His high character, his long services to the 
Liberal party, crowned by his personal devotion, 
priceless in Ireland in the troublous times between 
1882-85, marked him out for the office. But events 
move rapidly in politics, and some men insensibly 
move aside. It came to pass, on the day when Mr. 
Gladstone finally quitted the scene. Lord Spencer's 
name was not even mentioned in the running for the 
succession. 

It is a noteworthy coincidence, one of the few 
points of similarity in the careers of Mr. Gladstone 
and Mr. Disraeli, that having made their last speech 
in Ministerial capacity they walked away without 
taking formal farewell, leaving the House uncon- 
scious that it had been assisting at an historical scene. 
It did not know, on an August night passed away 
seventeen years earlier, when Mr. Disraeli stood by 
the table and joined in debate, that it would be the 
last time he might ever speak from the familiar 
place. He knew it of course, and it was possibly 
not by accident that the final word spoken by him in 



228 MR. GLADSTONE. 

the ear of the House of Commons was "Empire." 
The speech attracted little attention from a by no 
means crowded House. The Session was old, mem- 
bers were weary, and debates on foreign affairs had 
come to be something of a bore. The Premier spoke 
after dinner, and, resuming his seat, sat for a while 
silent with folded arms and head bent down. When 
the question in discussion of which he had joined 
was disposed of, midnight struck, and the business of 
the sitting was approaching completion. He rose 
and shook himself together with the action which in 
those last years he found a necessary preparation for 
stately march under observant eyes. Had he fol- 
lowed his ordinary habit and walked out behind the 
Speaker's chair, one would not have noticed, even 
been aware of, his departure. On this particular 
night he walked the full length of the floor, turning 
as he passed the Mace to make obeisance to the 
Speaker. He halted again on reaching the Bar, and 
stood there for a moment silently regarding the 
House less than half filled and wholly unconscious 
of this silent farewell. Then he crossed the Bar, 
never more to return to the scene of his one historic 
failure and his many brilliant successes. 

Mr. Gladstone, on finally quitting the Treasury 
Bench, did not even so far depart from his ordinary 
custom. He sat listening to Mr. Balfour's vigorous 
speech, in which the Opposition Leader announced 
amid a fresh burst of cheering from the delighted 
Liberals that "behind the dignified language of the 



THE BOW UNBENT. 229 

speech there lurked nothing less than a declaration 
of war against the ancient Constitution of these 
realms." After the division he sat for a while with 
his Ministerial box on his knee, chatting brightly to 
his colleagues, some of whom were sharers in his 
secret. Then he rose and walked out with springy 
steps, by his usual pathway behind the Speaker's 
chair. 

To men familiar for twenty years or more with the 
House of Commons it seemed impossible that it 
could be itself when this majestic figure was with- 
drawn. For those of sentimental mood the pity of it 
is that presently, almost immediately, things began 
to go forward much as they did when Mr. Gladstone 
sat in the seat of Leader. Xo man, not even Mr. 
Gladstone, is indispensable. When Mr. Disraeli 
vanished from the scene it was felt that an irretriev- 
able blow had been dealt at its attractiveness and 
personal interest. But the Speaker took the chair 
as heretofore. The Clerk proceeded to read the 
orders of the day. The Fourth Party leaped into 
existence to make things lively, and members stray- 
ing over to the House of Lords on occasional field 
nights marvelled to discover how dull Lord Beacons- 
field had become. 

Happily, though the dignified presence be with- 
drawn, and may never more be seen on the Treasury 
Bench, the figure which was the cynosure of every 
eye there will ever remain with the House of Com- 
mons the precious possession of memory. Men, in 



230 MR. GLADSTONE. 

this respect undivided by political opinion, momen- 
tarily free from party asperity, will be thankful that 
though they never saw Pitt in the flesh, never heard 
Canning's voice, they have sat through successive 
Parliaments with Mr. Gladstone. 



CHAPTER XXYL 

IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 

More than half a century ago there was published a 
little book entitled the " British Senate in 1838. " It 
is full of those personal descriptions of eminent men 
in their public capacity which, written in our own 
time, we very properly reprobate, but for which his- 
torians and biographers, writing many years after, 
are exceedingly grateful. The anonymous writer 
has preserved for posterity a picture of the young 
man eloquent which is rare and interesting. 

"Mr. Gladstone's appearance and manners," he 
says, " are much in his favor. He is a fine-looking 
man. He is about the usual height, and of good 
figure. His countenance is mild and pleasant, and 
has a highly intellectual expression. His eyes are 
clear and quick; his eyebrows are dark and rather 
prominent. There is not a dandy in the House but 
envies what Truefitt would call his ' fine head of jet- 
black hair. ' It is always carefully parted from the 
crown downward to his brow, where it is tastefully 
shaded ; his features are small and regular, and his 
complexion must be a very unworthy witness if he 
does not possess an abundant stock of health. Mr. 
Gladstone's gesture is varied but not violent. When 
he rises he generally puts both his hands behind his 



232 MR. GLADSTONE. 

back, and having there suffered them to embrace 
each other for a short time, he unclasps them, and 
allows them to drop on either side. They are not 
permitted to remain long in the locality before you 
see them again closed together, and hanging down 
before him. Their reunion is not suffered to last for 
any length of time. Again a separation takes place, 
and now the right hand is seen moving up and down 
before him. Having thus exercised it a little, he 
thrusts it into the pocket of his coat, and then orders 
the left hand to follow its example. Having granted 
them a momentary repose there, they are again put 
into motion, and in a few seconds they are seen 
reposing vis-a-vis on his breast. He moves his face 
and body from one direction to another, not forget- 
ting to bestow a liberal share of attention on his own 
party. He is always listened to with much atten- 
tion by the House, and appears to be highly respected 
by men of all parties. He is a man of good business 
habits ; of this he furnished abundant proof when 
Under-Secretary for the Colonies, during the short- 
lived Administration of Sir Robert Peel." 

It is curious to note that some of these manner- 
isms of nearly sixty years ago are preserved by the 
great statesman the House of Commons knew in the 
last decade of the nineteenth century. It was par- 
ticularly notable that up to the last, when Mr. Glad- 
stone rose and began what was intended to be a great 
oration, he had a tendency to clasp his hands behind 
his back. This attitude, like the subdued mood of 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 233 

which it is an indication, prevailed only during the 
opening sentences. Age fired rather than dulled his 
oratorical energy. When in Opposition during the 
Parliament of 1874-80 he increased in rapidity of 
gesture almost to the point of fury. The jet-black 
hair had faded and fallen, leaving only a few thin 
wisps of gray carefully disposed over the grandly 
formed head, with which, as he once told a Scotch 
deputation, London hatters have had such trouble. 
The rounded cheeks were sunken, their bloom giving 
place to pallor. The full brow was wrinkled. The 
dark eyes, bright and flashing still, were underset 
with innumerable wrinkles. The " good figure " was 
somewhat rounded at the shoulders ; and the sprightly 
step was growing deliberate. But the intellectual 
fire of early manhood was quickened rather than 
quenched, and the promise of health had been abun- 
dantly fulfilled in a maintenance of physical strength 
and activity that came to be phenomenal. Up to 
his eightieth year Mr. Gladstone would outsit the 
youngest member of the House if the issue at stake 
claimed his vote in the pending division. He could 
speak for three hours at a stretch, putting in in that 
time as much mental and physical energy as, judi- 
ciously distributed, would have sufficed for the whole 
debate. 

By comparison he was far more emphatic in ges- 
ture when addressing the House of Commons than 
when standing before a public meeting. This, doubt- 
less, was explicable by the fact that, while in the 



234 MR. GLADSTONE. 

one case he was free from contradiction, in the 
other he was, more particularly during periods of 
Tory ascendency, outrageously subject to it. Trem- 
bling through every nerve with intensity of conviction 
and the wrath of battle, he almost literally smote his 
opponent hip and thigh. Taking the brass -bound box 
upon the table as representative of "the right honor- 
able gentleman " or " the noble lord " opposite, he 
beat it violently with his right hand, creating a 
resounding noise that sometimes made it difficult to 
catch the words he desired to emphasize. Or, stand- 
ing with heels closely pressed together, and feet 
spread out fan-wise, so that he might turn as on a 
pivot to watch the effect of his speech on either side 
of the House, he would assume that the palm of his 
left hand was his adversary of the moment, and 
straightway violently beat upon it with his right 
hand. At this stage was noted the most marked 
retention of early House of Commons habit, in the 
way in which the orator continually turned round to 
address his own followers, to the outraging of a fun- 
damental point of etiquette which requires that all 
speech shall be directed to the Chair. 

There is a passage in Mr. Lecky's "History of 
England in the Eighteenth Century " which reads 
like a page taken out of a study of Mr. Gladstone, to 
be written by the historian who shall write the " His- 
tory of England in the Nineteenth Century. " 

Pitt had (Mr. Lecky writes) every requisite of a great debater : 
perfect self-possession ; an unbroken flow of sonorous and dignified 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 235 

language ; great quickness and cogency of reasoning, and especially 
of reply ; an admirable gift of lucid and methodical statement ; an 
extraordinary skill in arranging the course and symmetry of an 
unpremeditated speech ; a memory singularly strong and sin- 
gularly accurate. No one knew better how to turn and retort 
arguments, to seize in a moment on a weak point or an unguarded 
phrase, to evade issues which it was not convenient to press too 
closely, to conceal, if necessary, his sentiments and his intentions 
under a cloud of vague, brilliant, and imposing verbiage. 

With one exception this is a minute, accurate, 
and striking description of Mr. Gladstone in the 
House of Commons. The exception will be found in 
the first requisite cited in the summing up of the 
character of a great debater. Once on his feet in 
the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone's self-posses- 
sion left little to be desired. But when, in times of 
great pressure, badgered by inconsiderable persons 
on the opposite benches, the great orator, the states- 
man who towered head and shoulders above any who 
sat around him or before him, sometimes fell into a 
condition of mind and body that excited the mock- 
ing laughter of his opponents, the sorrow and regret 
of his friends. 

This weakness, the more notable by reason of its 
contrast with the imperturbability of Mr. Disraeli, 
made the parliamentary fortune of many men of 
varying abilit3\ When Sir William Harcourt and 
Sir Henry James sat together below the gangway in 
the Parliament of 1868, they, as we have seen, 
shrewdly recognized the pathway to promotion. In 
the same way, though not in similar degree, Mr. 
Ashmead Bartlett and Mr. Warton profited by Mr. 



236 MR. GLADSTONE. 

Gladstone's inability to control himself when, seated 
on either of the front benches, he followed the course 
of acrimonious debate. Mr. Stanley Leighton, who 
at one time seemed in the running, lost his prize 
only because he had not staying power. Mr. War- 
ton, a vulgar, boorish partisan, early discovered that 
he could " draw " Mr. Gladstone at pleasure, dis- 
turbing him at his work just as the braying of an ass 
which had strayed in the courtyard of the quiet house 
in the suburbs of Athens might have fatally broken 
in on the meditation of Plato. To call " Oh ! oh ! " 
and " Ah ! ah ! " when the veteran statesman, borne 
down through the day with imperial cares, was occu- 
pying an hour of the evening in strenuous debate, 
did not require much mental activity or seem to 
demand prodigious recompense. Yet it led Mr. 
Warton into a comfortable salaried office at the 
Antipodes. Mr. Ashmead Bartlett did better still, 
a minor place in the Ministry, crowned by a knight- 
hood, rewarding his patriotic endeavors. Working 
in the same way, though on a higher level, Lord 
Kandolph Churchill, Sir Henry Wolff, and Sir John 
Gorst first brought themselves into notice. 

Except at its very best, Mr. Gladstone's parlia- 
mentary manner lacked repose. He was always 
brimming over with energy which had much better 
have been reserved for worthier objects than those 
that sometimes succeeded in evoking its lavish expen- 
diture. I once followed Mr. Gladstone through the 
hours of an eventful sitting and jotted down notes of 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 237 

his manifold gyrations. It should be premised that 
the date was towards the conclusion of his second 
Administration, when once more, as in 1873, things 
were going wrong. The foe opposite was increasing 
in the persistence of its attack, and nominal friends 
on the benches near him were growing weary in 
their allegiance and lukewarm in their attachment. 
The Premier came in from behind the Speaker's 
chair with hurried pace. He had been detained in 
Downing Street up to the last moment by important 
despatches on a critical matter then engrossing public 
attention. As usual when contemplating making a 
great speech, he had a flower in his buttonhole, and 
was dressed with unusual care. Striding swiftly 
past his colleagues on the Treasury Bench, he 
dropped into the seat kept vacant for him, and has- 
tily taking up a copy of the Orders, ascertained 
what particular question in the long list had been 
reached. Then turning with a sudden bound of his 
whole body to the right, he entered into animated 
conversation with a colleague, his pale face working 
with excitement, his eyes glistening, and his right 
hand vehemently beating the open palm of his left 
as if he were literally pulverizing an adversary. 
Tossing himself back with equally rapid gesture, he 
lay passive, for the space of eighty seconds. Then, 
with another swift movement of the body, he turned 
to the colleague on the left, dashed his hand into his 
side pocket as if he had suddenly become conscious 
of a live coal secreted there, pulled out a letter, 



238 MR. GLADSTONE. 

opened it with violent flick of extended forefingers, 
and earnestly discoursed thereon. 

Eising presently to answer a question addressed to 
him as First Lord of the Treasury, he instantly 
changed his whole bearing. His full rich voice was 
attuned to conversational tone. The intense, eager 
restlessness of manner had disappeared. He spoke 
with exceeding deliberation, and with no other ges- 
ture than a slight outward waving of the right hand, 
and a courteous bending of the body in recognition 
of his interlocutor. The mere change of position, 
the contact of his feet with the solid earth, seemed, 
as was usually the case, to have steadied him and 
re-endowed him with full self-possession. Often in 
angry debates one has seen him bounding about on 
the Front Bench apparently in uncontrollable rage, 
loudly ejaculating contradiction, violently shaking 
his head, and tendering other evidence of lost tem- 
per, hailed with hilarious laughter and clieers from 
gentlemen opposite. Finally springing to his feet 
with a fierce bound, he has stood at the table motion- 
less and rigid, whilst the House rang with the tumult 
of cheers and the bray of hostile clamor. When the 
Speaker authorized his interruption it seemed as if 
the devil of unrest were thereby literally cast out. 
He suddenly became himself again, and in quiet 
voice set forth in admirably chosen language a 
weighty objection. 

On the night to which these notes refer the debate 
was resumed by Lord Randolph Churchill, who, then 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 239 

seated below the gangway, irresponsible and irre- 
pressible, had enjoyed an hour of perfect pleasure. 
With eye watchfully fixed on the mobile figure 
stretched out in the seat of the Leader of the House, 
he pricked and goaded him as the sprightly matador 
in the arena girds at the infuriate bull which, if it 
were only intelligently to expend its force, could 
tear the human mite into unrecognizable shreds. At 
first the Premier assumed an attitude of ordinary 
attention, with legs crossed, hands folded so that 
they caressed either elbow. He threw back his head 
so as to rest it on the back of the bench, and closed 
his eyes, the light from the roof falling on a per- 
fectly placid countenance. As Lord Randolph went 
on with quip and crank, audacious accusation and 
reckless misrepresentation of fact or argument, he 
uplifted his head, shuffled his feet, crossed and 
recrossed his hands, and fixed an angry eye on the 
delighted tormentor. The potion was beginning to 
work, and jeering cries from Conservatives above the 
gangway or howls from the Irish camp, at the gates 
of which Lord Randolph's standard was at that time 
planted, added to its efficacy. 

Soon Mr. Gladstone began to shake his head with 
increased violence as Lord Randolph repeated a 
statement thus contradicted. Louder grew the irri- 
tating cheers from the Opposition. The triumphant 
whisper went round, "Randolph's drawing him!" 
Excited by the tumult, and vainly trying to lift his 
still mighty voice above the uproar, Mr. Gladstone, 



240 MR. GLADSTONE. 

seating himself perilously near the edge of the seat, 
bending forward and grasping himself somewhere 
below the knee, leant across towards the more-than- 
ever-delighted adversary, angrily reiterating "No, 
no, no ! " A pitiful and undignified demonstration 
on the part of the Prime Minister, which was exactly 
what Lord Randolph Churchill was endeavoring to 
bring about, his success hailed with increasing 
cheers by the pleased Opposition. 

When Lord Randolph had made an end of speak- 
ing Mr. Gladstone sprang up with catapultic celerity. 
For a moment he held on to the box at arm's-length, 
drawing himself up to fullest height with a genial 
smile on his countenance that completed the contrast 
with his late perturbed manner. Once more he was 
himself, his supremacy over the House, lost through 
the lamentable exhibitions but just witnessed, imme- 
diately reassumed with his self-command. Now was 
witnessed exhibition of that skill which Mr. Lecky 
noted in Pitt. Like Pitt — as far as opportunity of 
judgment is possessed by the present generation, 
infinitely beyond Pitt — " no one knows better how 
to turn and retort arguments, to seize in a moment 
on a weak point or an unguarded phrase. " In half 
a dozen sentences of exquisitely modulated speech 
Mr. Gladstone, with the delightful benevolence with 
which Gulliver was able to refrain from resenting 
the pricking of the lance of Lilliput's doughtiest 
champion, played with Lord Randolph, and finally 
rolled him aside, turning his attention, as he said, 
to more serious matters. 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 241 

This was all very well to begin with. But warm- 
ing with his work, the Premier proceeded through a 
series of gymnastic exercises that would have left an 
ordinary man of half his years pale and breathless. 
Watching him as he brought down his strong right 
hand with resounding blows upon the Blue Book 
from which he had just quoted, new-comers to the 
House understood the fervency with which Mr. 
Disraeli once thanked God that the table intervened 
between him and his lifelong rival. So vigorous 
were the thumps that it was with difficulty the words 
they were intended to emphasize could be caught. 
The famous pomatum pot, which plays a prominent 
part on these occasions, had an exceedingly bad 
time. Mr. Gladstone's eye falling upon it as he 
fiercely gyrated, he seized it with sudden gesture, 
brought it to his lips with swift movement, and 
devoured a portion of its contents as if, instead of 
being an innocent compound of egg and wine, it were 
concentrated essence of Lord Randolph Churchill 
conveniently prepared with the view to his final 
disappearance from the scene. Sometimes with 
both hands raised rigid above his head ; often with 
left elbow leaning on the table and right hand 
with closed fist shaken at the head of some inotfend- 
ing country gentleman on the back benches opposite ; 
anon standing half a step back from the table, with 
the left hand hanging at his side and the right up- 
lifted so that he might with thumb-nail lightly touch 
the shining crown of his head, he trampled his way 

16 



242 MR. GLADSTONE. 

through the arguments of the adversary as an ele- 
phant in an hour of aggravation rages through a 
jungle. 

It is no new thing for great orators to have extrav- 
agant gestures. Peel had none, Pitt but few, 
and these monotonous and mechanical. But Pitt's 
father, the great Chatham, knew how to flash his 
eagle eye, to flaunt his flannels, and strike home 
with his crutch. Brougham once dropped on his 
knees in the House of Lords, and with outstretched 
hands implored the Peers not to reject the Reform 
Bill. Fox was sometimes moved to tears by his own 
eloquence. Burke on a famous occasion brought a 
dagger on the scene. Sheridan, when nothing else 
was to be done, knew how to faint ; whilst Grattan 
used to scrape the ground with his knuckles as he 
bent his body, and thank God he had no peculiari- 
ties of gesture. But in respect of originality, multi- 
plicity, and vehemence of gesture, Mr. Gladstone, as 
in some other things, beat the record of human 
achievement. 

Travelling in Sicily in the winter of 1838, Mr. 
Gladstone was much struck with the ruined temples 
that abound in the island. In his journal of this 
date, he writes : " They retain their beauty and their 
dignity in their decay, representing the great man 
when fallen, as types of that almost highest of human 
qualities — silent, yet not sullen, endurance." This 
is a type of greatness of which it must be admitted 
Mr. Gladstone does not furnish a specimen. There 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 243 

is no period in his history more fairly open to ani- 
madversion than that immediately, and for some 
time, following upon his fall from power in 1874. 
He had hitherto something more than led the Liberal 
party. He had, if need were, even dragged or driven 
them. He was inseparably bound up with their for- 
tunes, and it is a nice question how far he was at 
liberty, when abysmal distress followed upon a period 
of exceptional prosperity, calmly to cut himself 
adrift. The arrangement whereby Lord Hartington 
succeeded him in the Leadership was not altogether 
hopeless, if Mr. Gladstone had carried out in the 
letter and in the spirit the intention of withdrawing 
from active participation in politics, announced in 
his epistle to Earl Granville. But his temperament 
was not suited for the exhibition of silent, yet not 
sullen, endurance extolled in the monuments of 
ancient Sicily. Even in the first Session of the new 
Parliament he succeeded in introducing a disturbing 
feature in political warfare. No one knew exactly 
at what hour, or in respect of what question he 
might not suddenly appear — as he did on the second 
reading of the Public Worship Bill — and upset all 
calculation and all arrangement. This habit grew 
in intensity in the following Session, and Mr. Glad- 
stone came to be more terrible to his political friends 
than to the party opposite. It was all very well for 
the Liberals to meet in the Smoke-room of the 
Reform Club, and elect Lord Hartington leader, vice 
Mr. Gladstone retired from politics. It would have 



244 MR. GLADSTONE. 

been just as efficacious for the solar system to meet 
and elect the moon to rule by day, vice the sun 
resigned. Mr. Gladstone's erratic appearances in 
the political firmament were sufficient temporarily 
to dispose of the titular Leader of the Liberals, and 
to set the whole system once more revolving round 
himself. 

In 1876 his energies found a wider and a worthier 
field in vindication of the right of the Bulgarians to 
be delivered from pillage and murder. He threw 
himself into the cause of this oppressed nationality 
with as much enthusiasm and energy as a quarter of 
a century earlier he had undertaken to plead for the 
enchained Neapolitans. He finally threw off the 
thin, though honestly assumed, mask of retirement, 
and flung himself body and soul into the conflict. 
The sudden awakening of energy then shown was 
surpassed in the last months of 1879, when he opened 
the first of the Midlothian Campaigns. On the eve 
of his seventieth birthday, in the middle of a winter 
of unusual severity, he set out on a triumphal pro- 
gress. Day by day, sometimes twice and thrice a 
day, he addressed great audiences, often in the open 
air. Speech followed speech, none a repetition of 
another, and all the world agreed that never in 
history had there been an equal display of physical 
and intellectual force from a man whose years were 
threescore and ten. 

In this undertaking, as in all others of his life, 
Mr. Gladstone was moved by a strong, high passion, 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 245 

free from the dross of ignoble motive. Many dis- 
trusted and even abhorred the politician. All 
admired the man. To his contemporaries, the con- 
templation of his life is like a study of one of 
Turner's pictures made by a man with his nose an 
inch ofe the canvas. Attention is arrested by details 
not always attractive. They see strong mannerisms, 
and marvel at what they call eccentricities. To 
posterity Mr. Gladstone's life will be as this same 
picture regarded at due distance, the lurid colors 
softened, the angularities rounded off, the master- 
piece revealed in its incomparable excellence. 
^ Besides giving him a phenomenal physical constitu- 
tion, nature was lavish to Mr. Gladstone in other ways. 
Education, association, and instinct early led him 
into the political arena, where he immediately made 
his mark. But there are half a dozen other profes- 
sions he might have embarked upon with equal cer- 
tainty of success. Had he followed the line one of 
his brothers took, he would have become a prince 
among the merchants of Liverpool. Had he taken 
to the legal profession he would have filled the 
courts with his fame. Had he entered the Church 
its highest honors would have been within his grasp. 
If the stage had allured him the world would have 
been richer by another great actor — an opportunity 
some of his critics say not altogether lost in the 
political arena. In addition to the gifts of a mobile 
countenance, a voice sonorous and flexible, and a fine 
presence, Mr. Gladstone possesses dramatic instincts 



246 MR. GLADSTONE. 

frequently brought into play in House of Commons 
debate or in his platform speeches. In both, his ten- 
dency was rather towards comedy than tragedy. It 
was the fashion to deny him a sense of humor, -^ a 
judgment that could be passed only by a superficial 
observer. In private conversation his marvellous 
memory gave forth from its apparently illimitable 
store an appropriate and frequently humorous illus- 
tration of the current topic. If his fame had not 
been established on a loftier line he would be known 
as one of the most delightful conversationalists of 
the day. 

It is in this respect that his tirelessness habitually 
amazed those who came in contact with him. Ordi- 
nary men of half his age, having spent themselves in 
oratorical effort, are glad to benefit by a brief period 
of seclusion and rest. Mr. Gladstone, like all great 
workers, found recreation in change of employment. 
Asked once what was the secret of his long impreg- 
nable vitality, he quaintly answered, " There was a 
road leading out of London on which more horses 
died than on any other. Inquiry revealed the fact 
that it was perfectly level. Consequently the ani- 
mals in travelling over it used only one set of 
muscles. " 

His contributions to literature, extending over a 
period of nearly sixty years, are prodigious in quantity. 
His earliest efforts appeared in the Eton Miscellany^ 
which, in the year 1827, he mainly kept going, writ- 
ing under the pseudonym " Bartholomew Bouverie." 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 247 

Since then he has written pamphlets and books, the 
mere enumeration of which fills twenty -two pages in 
the catalogue of the British Museum. "The State 
in its Eelations with the Church," published in 
1838, remains the most famous. The work that had 
the largest circulation is the pamphlet on "The 
Vatican Decrees." This ran into 110 editions, and 
was translated into several foreign languages. The 
pamphlet on the "Bulgarian Horrors," published in 
1876, ran "The Vatican Decrees" close, over 80,000 
copies being sold. Whilst still busy with the Bul- 
garian atrocities, paving the way for the great 
triumph at the polls in 1880, he brought together 
what he called " Gleanings of Past Years, " being a 
reprint in seven volumes of the articles he had 
between 1843 and 1878 contributed to various re- 
views and quarterlies. On the very day he for the 
last time took leave of his colleagues in Cabinet 
Council, he turned to put the finishing touches to his 
translation of the "Odes of Horace." 

Mr. Gladstone's personality is one that could not 
fail to fascinate the public. Politics apart, he was 
irresistible. The tendency, equally compulsory, 
moved in two directions. He was at once the most 
passionately loved and the most fiercely hated man 
in England. 

Some incidents illustrating the personal feeling of 
political adversaries have been cited. It is pleasing 
to note that in his closing days in the House of Com- 
mons all the asperities that at one time pricked at 



248 MR. GLADSTONE. 

his presence were smoothed down. In the final Ses- 
sion of the Parliament of 1886-92, there was nothing 
more noticeable than the attitude of respect, almost 
of deference, with which the Ministerial majority 
bore themselves towards the Leader of the Opposi- 
tion. There was, doubtless, change on both sides. 
Advancing age seemed to have mellowed the great 
Parliamentary fighter. Moreover, the Conservative 
party were in this respect fortunate in their Leader. 
Mr. Gladstone always had a strong personal liking 
and admiration for Mr. Arthur Balfour, and bore 
himself towards him, when he came into the Leader- 
ship of the House, with something of a fatherly air, 
pretty to see, soothing amid the turmoil of faction, 
fight. 

It is amongst the masses that the fascination of 
Mr. Gladstone's personality works its way with full- 
est witchery. In the front rank of statesmen, a 
great orator, a ripe scholar, he is, they are glad to 
think, actually one of them. His homely domestic 
life was worth untold votes at a general election. 
The people liked to think of him with his plain pre- 
fix "Mr.," of his daughters who marry curates or 
work in schools, his sons who are " something in the 
City," and do not marry duchesses. They liked his 
stripping to the shirt to fell a tree, his going to 
church on Sundays and to the theatre or concert 
on Wednesdays or Saturdays. It is what they do 
themselves, or would do if they had the chance. 
He was one of them, to be trusted, fought for if 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 249 

need be, always esteemed with a sort of family 
affection. 

There were many manifestations of this intensity 
of feeling in the last Midlothian Campaign. Poli- 
tics of course had much to do with drawing together 
the multitudes that surged round the platform wher- 
ever Mr. Gladstone spoke, or in the streets, as Glas- 
gow filled on the Saturday afternoon he drove through 
the city. More striking were the demonstrations 
made in the remoter country districts through which 
he occasionally drove. There was no cottager too 
poor to decorate his house on the day " Mester Gled- 
stane " was to honor it by passing by. The decora- 
tion was often only a red cotton pocket-handkerchief 
or a bit of ribbon of the Gladstone color. But it 
had the value of being home-made and spontaneous. 
An old lady, housekeeper at a lodge in Haddington- 
shire, told me in her musically spoken Doric a little 
story which, better than pages of narrative or analy- 
sis, illustrates the hold Mr. Gladstone has on the 
common people. 

"An auld man, Geordie Paul," she said, "lived 
all alane in a wee cot up there," pointing to a hill 
close by. " He used to sit at his door reading the 
paper spread on his knee, and mony 's the time, 
when he thoucht naebody was looking, I 've seen 
him greeting and the tears drapt doon on the paper, 
and he aften muttered to himsel' ' To think they 'd 
use Gledstane sae ill and he sic a man ! ' The nicht 
afore Geordie deed I gaed in to see what I could dae 



250 MR. GLADSTONE. 

for him. There he was, sitting in the corner o' his 
bed sae weak he could na get on more than ane arm 
o' his jacket, but he had the paper propped up 
against the ither (upside doon), and the last words 
he said to me were : ' There 's ae (one) thing, Liz ; if 
I could only see that Irish question settled ! ' " 

The poor man knew little about the Irish question, 
the intricacies of which have baffled more fully cul- 
tivated persons. But he knew that " Mester Gled- 
stane " had made the question his own, had devoted 
the closing days of his life to its settlement. That 
was enough for the Scottish cotter, with his dimmed 
eyes turned upon his newspaper, searching in its 
blurred columns if peradventure, before they finally 
closed, they might alight upon some indication of 
the accomplishment of his hero's heart's desire. 

Mr. Gladstone's table talk was so charming that 
any company privileged to hear it might well be 
content that he should monopolize the conversation. 
But while when he sat at meat he was naturally the 
centre of interest, and rarely disappointed expecta- 
tion by indulging in taciturnity, there was no sense 
of his monopolizing conversation, as was the case 
with Coleridge or Macaulay. His remarks did not 
take the form of monologue. They were really con- 
versation. He did not even lead the topics, habitu- 
ally enlarging on some chance remark dropped by 
one of the circle. But, whatever the subject, how- 
ever great the authority who floated it, it generally 
turned out that Mr. Gladstone knew more about it 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 251 

than any one in the room. Where he was most in- 
teresting was in his reminiscences of the men he had 
worked with during the last half-century, and of 
episodes in the history he helped to make. He loved 
to talk about Sir Robert Peel, for whom to the last 
he preserved some of the veneration with which he 
approached him when he was still a young man and 
Peel was in his prime. On one night that dwells in 
the memory he talked much more genially of Disraeli 
than was his wont. Admiration of his ability was 
generally handicapped by distrust of his moral char- 
acteristics and dislike of his tactics. On this night 
he was unsparing in his praise, even invented a new 
word in his honor. " He was, " he said emphatically, 
"the greatest sarcast that ever spoke in Parlia- 
ment; " and forthwith he rattled off half a dozen of 
"Dizzie's" phrases, some of them famous, all of 
which he had heard. It is to be hoped he never 
heard one, not the least clever, which the late Car- 
dinal Manning made a note of: "You surprise me," 
said Lord Beaconsfield, when Manning had been 
comparing what he regarded as the calm, broad- 
balanced Gladstone of an earlier day and the Glad- 
stone of later years. " I thought he had always been 
an Italian in the custody of a Scotchman." 

Mr. Gladstone's memory was simply phenomenal. 
At a touch, at the sound of a name, everything came 
back to him — time, place, date, every circumstance, 
as if it all passed only yesterday, whereas, it may 
be, the incident happened forty years ago. An 



252 MR. GLADSTONE. 

admirable raconteur, he brought to the art the gifts 
of a rich, deep, musical voice, and singular mobility 
of features. He had the most wonderfully expres- 
sive face a man's soul ever looked forth from. Its 
varying light illumined every turn of every sentence 
he spoke. Sometimes it was lighted up by merriest 
smiles, anon clouded with awful scorn or withering 
anger. In the course of conversation on the night 
alluded to, chance reference was made to the period 
of the union between England and Ireland. Mr. 
Gladstone, following out the train of thought, related 
some episode in the Parliamentary negotiations, and 
then, his eyes flashing under frowning brows, and 
slowly shaking his head, he said in deep, grave tones : 
"It was a bad business, — a bad business." Evi- 
dently this crime, nearly a century old, was as fresh 
in his mind as if it had been committed that morn- 
ing, and reflection upon it gave him as much pain as 
if he now realized it for the first time. 

In a capacity for, and a habit of, throwing all his 
soul and body into whatever business he undertook, 
probably lay the secret of Mr. Gladstone's command- 
ing force and influence. Whatever he chanced to be 
doing or discussing at a particular moment was 
regarded by him as a matter worthy the concentra- 
tion of the whole of his forces. A striking instance 
of this finds record in an account given by Mr. 
Baines of his forty years at the Post Office. " Mr. 
Scudamore told me, " Mr. Baines writes, " as instan- 
cing Mr. Gladstone's power of rapidly assimilating 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 253 

information, that being one day summoned to the 
Treasury for the purpose, he spent an hour, between 
two and three o'clock, in explaining verbally to the 
Chancellor the intricate details of the scheme for the 
transfer of telegraphs as finally arranged at the Post 
Office. At three o'clock Mr. Gladstone said that he 
must then break otf the conference, as he had to think 
over what had been told him and be at the House by 
four. An hour or two later he explained to the House 
of Commons, in Mr. Scudamore's hearing, the whole 
plan, principles and details included, in a luminous 
speech, from which not a single item of information 
essential to its complete exposition was omitted." 

Mr. Gladstone remained to the end what he was 
even in Mr. Bright's prime, the finest orator in the 
House of Commons. In sheer debating power he 
was perhaps excelled by Mr. Chamberlain, who, 
with not less of his adroitness and command of 
language, has a way of going straight to a point and 
hammering it down, which Mr. Gladstone, allured 
by by-paths of illustration and commentary, some- 
times failed to find. But when it came to lofty and 
sustained oratory Mr. Gladstone was unapproach- 
able. This was shown in half a dozen ways. One, 
peculiar and convincing, appeared in connection 
with the duty which from time to time calls upon a 
Leader of the House to lament the death of an emi- 
nent member. Mr. Disraeli felt the difficulty of 
this situation so acutely that on a famous occasion 
he borrowed from a French statesman when he 



254 MR. GLADSTONE. 

desired to pronounce a eulogy at the grave of an 
English captain. Mr. Bright, when he rose to speak 
to the House of Commons of his dead friend Cob- 
den, was movingly eloquent. But it was the elo- 
quence of broken speech and faltering tongue. One 
occasion on which this duty was performed in the 
House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone followed upon 
the death of John Bright, and as, owing to peculiar 
circumstances, an unusually large number of mem- 
bers took part in the scene, there was fuller oppor- 
tunity of estimating the difficulties of the situation. 
Mr. Gladstone at the outset instinctively touched the 
right chord, and throughout his speech played upon 
it, satisfying the exacting taste of the audience. 

It was in hours like this the House of Commons 
saw, through the haze of party conflict, how noble 
were the proportions of the figure that dwelt amongst 
it for more than fifty years. In a fine passage in a 
speech delivered at Birmingham in June, 1885, Mr. 
Chamberlain, little dreaming what a year might 
bring forth, described Mr. Gladstone's position in 
words that leave nothing more to be said : — 

" I sometimes think that great men are like great mountains, 
and that we do not appreciate their magnitude wliile we are 
still close to them. You have to go to a distance to see which 
peak it is that towers above its fellows; and it may be that 
we shall have to put between us and Mr. Gladstone a space 
of time before we shall know how much greater he has been than 
any of his competitors for fame and power. I am certain that 
justice will be done to him in the future, and I am not less cer- 
tain that there will be a signal condemnation of the men who, 
moved by motives of party spite, in their eagerness for office, 



IN THE HOUSE AND OUT. 255 

have not hesitated to load with insult and indignity the greatest 
statesman of our time ; who have not allowed even his age which 
should have commanded their reverence, or his experience which 
entitles him to their respect, or his high personal character or 
his long services to his Queen and to his country, to shield him 
from the vulgar affronts and the lying accusations of which he 
has nightly been made the subject in the House of Commons. 
He, with his great magnanimity, can afford to forget and for- 
give these things. Those whom he has served so long it behooves 
to remember them, to resent them, and to punish them." 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 434 477 4 



